


In the Woods Somewhere

by singtome



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Fluff and Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Shifting POV between Stan and Richie, Slow Burn, background benverly, over the garden wall au, the clown is also here, world building off the shits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:48:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 44,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27132707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singtome/pseuds/singtome
Summary: At the approximate hour of seventeen-past-four in the morning, and somewhere around the time when it seemed as if the ink itself was lifting off the pages of the books to whisper in his ears, Richie Tozier hit his very first breakthrough.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Stanley Uris, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Richie Tozier & Stanley Uris
Comments: 13
Kudos: 19





	1. Act 1.

**Author's Note:**

> please don't ask me how this got to 44k, because I don't know either. regardless of the length, I hope you enjoy
> 
> title from _In The Woods Somewhere_ by Hozier

“Of course, while I’m in the wood,

if I decide never to come back,

well then, that will be that.”

\- Natalie Nesbit, _Tuck Everlasting_

The kettle has not even begun to screech yet when Richie comes blundering down the stairs two at a time, skidding into the kitchen with a flurry of wide-eyed excitement that, Stan thinks, is far too much for half seven in the morning. 

Stanley Uris takes a deep breath and continues staring out the window of the cabin, electing to ignore his friend for the time being. That time, to be exact, is a total of twelve two seconds. While Richie catches his breath, Stan continues to admire the red-feathered Northern Cardinal hopping from branch to branch in the young sycamore tree, which grows outside their window. Sunlight streams down in ribbons on the grassy floor of the forest outside, a natural spotlight shining on various plants – carnivorous or otherwise, and natural and not entirely natural – that Stan has dedicated quite a decent amount of time and effort into ensuring they bloom. This morning, nurtured by the sparkling sun rays, they are thriving.

A young blossom sways left to right on its own accord and shakes its peaky green leaves at Stan as if to say, _what now?_

Richie straightens his shirt – the day clothes he had been wearing from the night before, which tells Stan that he is doing that Not Going To Sleep thing again – and shifts his weight. He scoops another teaspoon of sugar into his mug and steadies himself.

Richie intakes a breath and begins, “Stan –”

The kettle has begun to screech.

“Richie,” Stan says, removing it from the stove before the high whistle becomes too much, and follows with the question, “Do you know what time it is?”

“Uh,” Richie mutters, and when Stan takes a good look at him, he is scratching his scalp, tufts of unbrushed dark hair fluffing upwards. His glasses perch lower on the bridge of his nose than he would normally wear them, and Stan can easily see the red-rim blush of a sleepless night. “Right, yeah. Good morning.”

Stan drops a tea bag into his mug and pours the water, the steam rising upward and curling his hair. “Can you really say that if you’ve been up all night?”

“I haven’t –” Richie laughs, a sheepish titter, “I haven’t been – okay, fine, yeah, I have. But for good reason!”

Stan opens the cabinet door to hide his eye roll and pulls out the box of mixed flavour oatmeal. “Maple or superfruit?”

“I’m not hungry,” Richie says.

“Superfruit it is,” Stan says, dropping two packets on the counter. Richie continues to complain at his elbow.

Stan is by no means a morning person, and three years behind the Wall has done nothing to change this. If anything, it’s worse.

(In the mornings, he wakes to the sound of birds singing lullabies and frogs that harmonize with the grasshoppers, who provide backup vocals to the birds and aid with melody. Warm sun stained sheets tangle around his ankles, and even with the high ring of the alarm clock bouncing around the table at his bedside, Stan finds it incredibly difficult to drag himself out of bed.

This morning has been an exception for a particularly exceptional reason, of which he will explain in _three, two_ …) 

“Richie! I don’t want to hear it!” Stan snaps when Richie doesn’t relent, padding around at his ankles like an insistent pup. He turns on him with a spoon in hand, cooked oats clinging to the lip, and waves it at his friend threateningly. “You haven’t been able to sleep. Guess what? Me neither. Ask me why?”

“Um.” Richie chews his lip in contemplation, eyes narrowing on the spoon before flitting back up to Stan’s face, which wouldn’t be much more pleasant. “My dear Stanley,” he begins, waveringly, “what could it be that possibly kept you from your beauty sleep? Which you totally don’t need, by the –”

“What kept me up,” Stan cuts him off, “Was your pacing around you room all night, books being dropped on the floor, and oh!” Stan swings the spoon at Richie’s fingers, barely missing his knuckles, “You tap-tap-tapping away at the fuckin typewriter all night, Richie! I’m tired of this.”

(To be fair, this does tend to happen once or twice a month, so maybe it isn’t particularly exceptional.)

Richie’s face screws up, and he says, “I’m sorry.”

Stan, with a sigh, turns back to cooking their breakfast, and quips, “You’re not sorry.”

“No, I’m not,” Richie agrees. Stan groans at the pot of oats. “Not not sorry that I kept you up, Stan – no really – but listen to me. Are you listening? I’m going to assume you are. I found something!”

It’s far too early, and Richie is at that point of sleeplessness where his sentences take longer than a second to figure out, so Stan says, “Tell me after we’ve eaten,” and takes their bowls into the dining room without another word.

-

At the approximate hour of seventeen-past-four in the morning, and somewhere around the time when it seemed as if the ink itself was lifting off the pages of the books to whisper in his ears, Richie Tozier hit his very first breakthrough.

It isn’t exactly Richie’s fault they wandered into this world and got stuck, and Stan would never blame him for it, but Richie acknowledges that he is somewhat, even a smidge, at fault for their predicament. This is why for the last three years – a day short of exact – Richie has searched through every book, memoir, and even a couple grimoires he’d managed to get his hands on.

(He returned them after a group of furious toads knocked on their door and demanded it back, Stan giving him That Look).

So far, nothing he’s read has been any use in figuring out a way over or through the Wall that surrounds the land, and seems to stretch on for infinity lengthways. Not to mention the highways covered in countless thorns and poisonous flora that could strike you paralysed with the slightest touch within seconds, and kill you in minutes.

Three years and nothing.

Until now.

-

Richie waits patiently until Stan has finished his bowl of oatmeal as promised – which he does agonisingly slow, savouring every berry and every god damn piece of oat – before pouncing. Stan levels him with an irritated glare, as if his insistent patience holds the same amount of spite as the speed in which Stan consumed the oatmeal, sighs, and says, “Fine. Go ahead.”

Richie slams the book on the light oak table between them hard enough that the spoons clatter in their bowls, and Stan swears.

With a huff, Richie says, “I found something.”

“No shit?”

“Yes shit.”

Richie grins broadly and flips open the book – golden and worn, but not quite as old as half of the other books Richie has stacked in his bedroom like he’s building a tiny labyrinth. It lands with another clang on the table to a page Richie has marked. Dust hangs in the air above it, glittering in the morning sunlight, reminding Stan of fireflies hovering above a grassy bank. Stan tilts his head in an attempt to make out the words before Richie spins in to face him properly.

Stan has become used to Richie’s research tactics, ranging from scouring books and records (the most current) to marching into inns and taverns and demanding information off whatever poor patron, andromorphic or vegetable-face alike, catches his eye first (previously). Whatever phase Richie is in now or whatever is coming next, Stan is just glad he’s moved past sitting by the river bank and interrogating frogs. They simply stared at him with humour and a smidge of pity, and sang lullabies at him until he passed out. 

“Okay,” Richie begins, “Read from here … to here.”

Richie pushes the book closer to Stan until it touches his chest.

Stan takes one proper look at the book and closes his eyes with a sigh. “Richie.”

“Just read it,” he insists.

Stan opens his eyes, already feeling a headache coming on. “Richie, this is a _poetry_ _book_.”

“That’s what I thought at first!” he says, “but then I started looking deeper into it, and – just read? Please. If you hate it, I promise I’ll find you some, I don’t fuckin’ know, the raven dude or road less travelled?”

Richie cracks a smile, but despite the humour, Stan can see the desperation in his friend’s eyes, and decides to throw him a bone.

The passage reads:

_O Traveller, fear not the road ahead but the road past_

_For the road past is a road that will not last_

_While_ _in_ _the road ahead you may be mislead_

_By false whispers_ _,_ _and_ _tales to beware_

_Seek the Historian, for he will know_

_A way through the veils,_ _and past the scales_

_So you, O Traveller,_ _may_ _walk_ _the road of ere_

Stan reads the poem two, three more times before his eyes glaze over. “This literally does not make any sense,” he says. “And I think there’s a part missing in the middle.”

“Yeah, I had to read it a couple times, too. The whole book’s scattered like that. But!” Richie stabs the page with his finger, “This bit where it talks about _seek The Historian? For he will know a way through the veils?_ ”

Stan glances at the book once again, eyes lingering on the word _scales_. “You think this Historian person, if they’re a person, is real?”

Richie’s brown eyes, unobscured by his glasses that now perch on his head, securing his hair back from his face, fill with excitement and promise that Stan finds himself softening over. Whatever this lead is that Richie thinks he has, he feels passionate and hopeful over it, and who is Stan to deny him that? After three years over the Wall, Stan is just happy at least one of them retains some sliver of hope inside them.

“I think so,” Richie says, leaning forward over the table, “and I think I know how to find them.”

-

Richie bounces in the seat of the wagon like an impatient child, and Stan snaps the reigns for the horses to go faster.

One of the horses grunts, and says, “Apple.”

“After,” Stan tells her, for the fourth time in the last half-hour, “We get into town, and then you’ll get your apples. That’s the deal, that’s _always_ the deal.”

The other horse mutters, “Carrot,” and Stan feels a twitch developing on his eyelid.

They’re good horses. Stan and Richie found them during their first week in this world and named them Apple and Carrot respectfully, for obvious reasons. It was a bit of a shock at first to discover that the animals spoke, however after a handful of time listening to _AppleCarrotAppleCarrot_ over and over, the appeal got old pretty fast.

It almost makes Stan wish they never stole them from that barn. Almost.

(It was either steal the horses or have to deal with the Whatever it was that was growling at them from the darkness of the woods on foot.)

“We can just give them half a carrot,” Richie says.

“We can’t give them anything, Richie,” Stan says, eyes never leaving the road ahead. The town is finally beginning to appear in the distance, and he can see the tip of the belltower piercing the bottom of the horizon. Stan and Richie take the plants they grow outside the cottage to the town every Saturday to sell to townsfolk who buy in bulk. They’re nice enough people, kind of freakish and off-putting at first, with their broad smiles, blackberry eyes and corn husk clothing, but no one has raised a threatening hand to Stan or Richie yet.

Chrysanthemums are the favourites of most townsfolk, followed by belladonna and archangelica, but do not, under any circumstances, try and sell them vegetables. They’ve made that mistake once, and the haunting hiss that travelled and grew across the town still haunts Stan’s dreams.

Richie sends him a side-eyed glare. “You’re such a priss today, Uris. The fuck’s your problem?”

“Fuck off, Rich,” Stan mutters, hunching over the bar of the cart and gripping the reigns tighter. “For all we know we could be walking into a murder house.”

“In order to walk into a murder house, we must first be heading toward the murder house, Stanley,” Richie says, sagely.

“Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry,” Stan says, placing his hand over his heart. Carrot whinnies. “We’ll just forget about selling our stock to the creepy townspeople and starve for the rest of the week. That sounds like a plan.”

Richie says, “I understand that you’re nervous.”

Stan clamps a hand down on Richie’s thigh, putting a stop to the insistent bouncing. Richie blinks down at his leg as if he hadn’t known it was doing anything other than existing there, being a leg, his dark hair slipping from hind his ear, and curling around his chin. It’s getting longer. Stan offered to cut it for him last month, but Richie had insisted he liked it long, keeping it at bay with a bit of twine or a hat. 

“Looks like I’m not the only one.”

They ride the rest of the way into town in silence.

-

Richie’s sure if Stan hasn’t managed to kill him just yet on this whole journey, seeing the outside of the house he’s led them to will be the defining factor that pushes him over the edge. Richie will be strangled to death by his best friend at the tender age of eighteen, and he has accepted that fate.

Afternoon sun glares off a polished golden plaque nailed to the face of a stone wall that holds up a gate. The gate leads to a very unwelcoming mansion that stands in the middle of the woods four stories high. Colourful stained-glass windows adorn the house's front facade, and what looks like gargoyles, or this world’s equivalent of gargoyles, at least, perch on pointed arches around the sides. The world is painted in orange brushstrokes that take extra care in the detail of the unmaintained garden and frighteningly large cobwebs strung from either side of the path leading to the house like they could support lanterns. 

“A museum?” 

“Where else would you find a historian?” Richie asks. Stan has no biting remark for that.

They park the cart outside the gates. Apple whines, “Apple,” and Carrot echoes with, “Carrot.”

Stan scoops out the bag out from the back of the wagon and gives them what they want. When Richie raises a questioning eyebrow at him, his friend remarks they’ll need every bit of energy to ride away should he and Richie need to make a quick escape.

The gate opens with one push, leaving a dusty residue on Richie’s fingers. A frog croaks at them from a nondescript coner of the garden void as the two of them walk down to dirt path. When Richie feels Stan jump closer to him against his back, he does his best to hide a smirk. 

A bronze frog stares at them eerily from the large oak door, perched above a door knocker engraved with vines. Taking a deep breath, Richie reaches out and knocks twice, the sound of the metal hitting the wood reverbing in his ears.

They wait for some moments. Nothing happens.

Stan says, “Rich, I don’t think anyone lives here.”

Richie knocks again.

“Richie, look around you,” Stan whispers, gripping his arm, “This place looks as if it’s been abandoned for years. I don’t think –”

The door opens, slow and with a creek that hurts Richie’s teeth. No one is on the other side. The house interior is dark and dusty, light shining through the windows in interrupted ribbons, creating oblong patterns on the carpet.

The boys look at each other, and in a second, have their fists out to compete in a quick and tense game of Rock Paper Scissors, best two out of three. Stan loses, and with a daggered glare at Richie, begrudgingly enters the house with Richie at his heels.

Stan isn’t quite tall enough for Richie to properly hide behind, but just enough. Both of them have grown since climbing the Wall and entering this world at fifteen years old. The years have been spent with the two competing in a game of tag and growing at a pace that raced to beat the other. At fifteen, Stan stood taller than Richie by all of one inch, and then at sixteen Richie’s chin touched Stan’s eyebrows. At seventeen, they were equal once again, but by Richie’s eighteenth birthday, it was clear that Stan’s height considered itself happy where it was, and Richie’s stubbornly agreed he could go a little more. Now, he can comfortably rest his chin on the top of Stan’s curly dark hair.

If Richie were to slump a little, he might almost be obscured entirely by Stan.

Stan fiddles with the cuff of his shirt and takes a cautious step further into the house. Richie reaches out and takes hold of the tan suspenders crossing his back.

Stan clears his throat and calls out, “Hello?” his voice echoing down the hall. When nothing happens, he tries again, “Hi, um. We’re looking for someone named The Historian?”

The wind outside whistles and rattles the windows.

“If we have the – the wrong house, we’ve very sorry. Just let us know and we’ll be on our way, but if you are in here …” Stan takes a deep breath, and says, “Please.”

They hear footsteps to the left, and turn their heads in quick tandem. A figure emerges from the darkness of the hallway, tall and great, with a long cloak dragging on the floor, and a large head with branch-like appendages that protrude off the round shape of it in any which direction, scraping along the walls as it walks.

Together, Richie and Stan grab each other and scream.

The creature screams, too.

The three stand in the entrance of the house and scream, Richie holding Stan by his middle as Stan clutches at his sleeve hard enough to rip, and the creature –

Is holding its hands up – its surprisingly human-looking hands – and says, “Whoa, whoa!” at them, waving those human appendages in the air. Suddenly, the creature steps out of the shadows and pulls off its head – a mask, and a horribly disturbing one at that – to reveal a young man underneath. He drops the mask to the floor and shouts, “It’s okay!”

Like a slow fall, Richie and Stan stop yelling.

“I’m not going to hurt you!” The man is saying. Or he could be a boy, Richie thinks. It’s a little hard to tell. He is tall, skin a warm shade of dark brown, and at that fuzzy age where the tilt on his chin could mean he is no older than eighteen, but the strength of his shoulders and perfect way in which he holds his posture could be twenty-five. His smile is sheepish as he unties the string holding the cloak around his neck and pushes the horrific mask away with his foot, attempting to conceal it behind a pillar holding a vase of dead flowers.

“You’re not?” Stan asks, voice a hushed squeak.

“No, not at all!”

“Why are you doing in that thing?” Richie demands.

“Sorry, forgot I had it on,” he says, then gestures to the front door, “How did you get in?”

“Door swung open,” Richie and Stan answer at the same time. The man grimaces.

“Oh yes,” he says, “I’ve been meaning to get that fixed. Anyway. So sorry about all of that. How can I help you?”

Richie releases Stan, and Stan releases his death grip on Richie’s shirt, who straightens his ruffled collar and clears his throat.

“We’re here to see the Historian.” 

The man’s eyebrows raise, and he straightens his shirt. Grinning, he says, “Alright, then you came to the right place. But I prefer Mike.” 

Halloween night, three years ago today, Stan and Richie found themselves chased through the streets of Derry. As they ran past houses adorned with Jack O Lanterns, skeletons hanging from porches and orange lights strung from windows, some noosing the skeletons, the crazed roar of Bowers and his two lackeys followed them.

_“_ _You_ _’_ _re fuckin_ _’_ _dead!_ _”_ screamed Bowers, _“_ _Both of you losers are fuckin_ _’_ _dead!_ _”_

Richie took hold of Stan’s wrist and began to steer him through a small opening through the back fence of a random yard. “This way,” he hissed with urgency, while Stan nervously grumbled something about trespassing.

Richie doesn’t even remember what it is they did to make Henry Bowers so mad that night, and set him off on one of his triyearly murderous rampages. He guesses it doesn’t matter now, as what’s done is done.

The path through that yard had been long – strangely long by the time they hit the old swing set shoved into a broken corer or fence, vines and plants curling around the metal as if to slowly drag it under the earth, and abnormally long when they reached the well.

“The hell is this place?” Stan asked, his breath coming out as frost. “Richie, I don’t think we should be here. I don’t have a good feeling about this …”

Though he did not admit it at the time, Richie felt the same creeping dread and chill in his bones as Stan. But, Bowers' murderous growls were near inaudible in the distance, so Richie pushed against the warning gut feeling and continued on anyway.

“Where do you think we are?” he asked. The yard, or wherever it was they were, grew stranger the more they walked through – dirt paths turned to cobblestone, gardens full of flowers too vividly purple and blue to be natural, and ironstone benches that looked they were designed and built for a small child.

“Private property,” Stan said as they trudged on. “Man, whoever lives here must be filthy rich. They’ve got a whole fuckin’ national park back here. If we get caught, our parents are defiantly getting sued.” 

That’s when they first saw it: the Wall. Stone covered in trellises of vines and flowers. It looked easy enough to climb, Richie remembers thinking, and it looked nothing how it does today. The thorns and poisonous buds were not there as they are now. The Wall was inviting them to climb it; the Wall _wanted_ them to climb it. 

Stan looked at the Wall with wide eyes, and huffed a single, awestruck, “Whoa.”

That is, of course, when Bowers’ cries returned with an alarming closeness, and there seemed as if there was no other choice.

Richie and Stan entered the new world dressed as a werewolf and a wizard, respectfully. 

-

Mike places tea filled with jasmines in front of Stan and Richie, and joins them at the table. They’re seated in a sunroom at the very back of the house, where the stained-glass casts shadows of rich reds, yellows, blues, and greens across the room. The jasmine petals swim in a circle in the centre of the teacup, almost as if they’re dancing.

Mike asks, “You want to leave the Unknown?” with an incredulous lilt in his voice that doesn’t sound all too hopeful.

“That’s the plan,” Stan says, “And word around town is you know how to do that.”

“Where did you hear that?”

Richie scoops the book out of his bag and dumps it ceremoniously on the table. The teacups whine.

Mike’s eyebrows shoot up at the site of the book, and slowly, with a cautious hand, he reaches out to trace the pads of his fingers over the engraved front. “Well then,” he says, “I haven’t seen this in a very long time.”

“It talks about you in there,” Richie says.

“Well, it talks about the whole land,” Stan says.

“Yes,” Mike agrees, opening the cover and examining the first page, “That’s generally what history books do.”

Stan’s hand pauses halfway lifting the teacup to his lips. “I’m – sorry. Did you say history book?”

Beside him, Richie grins, broad and smug. Stan tries not to give him the satisfaction of reacting too much.

Mike turns the book around so they can read the Acknowledgements page, “It says it right here: A Brief History of the Unknown.” 

Stan feels his cheeks redden. Staring down at his tea, he mumbles, “I thought that was just a … thing.”

“It’s very much not just a _thing_ ,” Mike says. “A friend of mine wrote this a very long time ago. Some years after I first wandered in here, like I assume you two did?”

Richie nods, “We climbed the Wall after finding it in some rich bastard’s back yard, and we’ve been stuck here ever since.”

Mike closes the book. “Yes, that’s –”

“Sorry for interrupting,” Stan says, holding a hand up. Richie gives him an annoyed glare. “You said your friend wrote that? That book right there? Some years _after_ you came here?”

Mike’s eyebrows furrow. “Yes?”

“That book is … it’s old. It’s really old. Mike, how old are you?”

Something shifts in Mike’s eyes. They turn glassy and thoughtful, his forehead smoothing out as he leans back in his seat and mutters, “Huh. I guess I haven’t thought about that for a very long time. I was … nineteen when I came here. Yes, and that was,” he pauses for a handful of moments, eyes squinting into space and lips moving minutely as he counts quietly to himself. When he is finished he blinks, and settles his gaze on Stan and Richie once again. “What year was it when you arrived?”

“1966,” Richie answers.

“Wow, okay. Then it would be about two hundred years, give or take a decade.”

Stan, who had been taking a sip of tea, chokes on it.

“You’re two hundred years old?” Richie cries as he hits Stan on the back. “ _You_ are? Holy shit, that’s … that’s fuckin’ crazy, man. Why don’t you age?”

“Not sure,” Mike mutters, and there is something in the underlining of his tone that tells Stan he doesn’t much like to think about it. Then, Richie shouts and flips to the very back page of the book as Stan wipes away tears. There, on the back cover and beneath an author’s note, is a small photograph is Mike and another man, whom he assumes is the author. Mike looks at it fondly, a small smile pulling at his lips.

Richie asks, “You really know how to leave?”

“I do,” Mike says, “And, to be perfectly honest, your timing couldn’t have been better.”

Mike leads the two of them into a room that could not have been more purple if it tried. He sits them down on a velvet couch and flits around the room, collecting various books from the bookshelves that stretch all the way to the ceiling. Thin candles held by a candelabra shaped like a small bronze tree flickers ominously. The curtains are drawn to block out any hint of the setting sun. For all Stan knew, it could very well have been the middle of the night. 

After a good five minutes, Mike and his armful of books settle on the twin couch opposite the one Stan and Richie sit on, and he begins, “Okay. Have either of you heard of the Beast?”

The boys blink at him in unison.

Stan thinks, despite not having lived in this world too long, that if he and Richie managed to go three years without hearing a single mention of this Beast, then _that_ would have been an achievement. There is a special type of root the townsfolk ask Stan to grow – or highly suggest he grows – that, upon handing it to them, they whisper a small chant and murmur, “For protection from the Beast.” 

Eventually, after some months, one of them (it was Richie) finally built up the courage to ask. In a very Richie like manner; “Fuck’s up with this Beast thing, anyway?”

The phrasing sent the villagers into a crazed panic at the outward and blatant way Richie had said the creature’s name, and they had to run. Long story short, Stan does not grow plants for that particular town anymore.

(That day sticks in Stan’s mind too clearly: Running, Richie tripping over something on the ground, and that very same something cutting his skin and causing an infection which snowballed at an alarming rate. It was when they met the strange boy in the woods, with his blue clothing and backpack full of herbs and medicine, who helped Stan take Richie home and single handily nursed him back to health. When he’d left, and Stan was a pale, sniffling mess, he’d only stopped in the doorway to for a second when Stan asked his name. _Eddie_.)

“Okay, that’s a dumb question. How much do you know about the Beast?”

Richie says, “He’s evil? Folks here are scared shitless of him?”

Mike shows them a photo of a map. “Basically, there’s one way in and one way out of the Unknown, and it involves crossing the Wall. Every three years the door opens up, and anyone may come and go. However,” he says, tracing his finger along a winding road, “the Beast guards this road that leads to the exit. It wakes up when the door opens, and remains awake until it closes. If you want to leave, you’ll have to get past the Beast.”

Richie says, “We didn’t see anything when we got here,” at the same time Stan asks, “What does it look like?”

“The Beast won’t attack those who enter, only those who try and leave,” Mike says, and to Stan, “No one knows exactly. It’s said It will change Its shape to whatever it is that frightens a person the most.”

“How do we get past it?” Richie asks.

Mike shrugs, “Pick something non-threatening to be afraid of? Maybe a small dog.”

Stan leans back against the couch with a sigh.

“Are you serious?” Richie says, his fists balling on top of his knees, “That’s your advice? You’re supposed to be the only one in this world who knows how to do this!”

“Just because I know how, doesn’t mean I’ve ever done it.”

Richie flops back against the couch with Stan.

“How do we know if the door’s open?”

“It opens and will remain open,” Mike repeats. He leans forward over his knees, resting on his elbows and levelling the both of them with a solemn, serious look. At once, he appears both ancient and young.

“You will know that the door is open when something changes,” Mike continues, “You’ll need to look out for anything that looks different or out of the ordinary. Find that change, and there you have it. The door is open and the Beast is awake.”

“Okay,” Richie says, “Great. What happens after that?”

“The books say that there’s a total of three things that will happen when you meet the Beast.” He holds up three fingers and begins to check them off one by one. “The change is the first. The second thing that will happen is you will be visited by two animals – a bird and a toad. One will be a warning, and the other will be an ally. All of the writings are oddly specific about this point.”

Stan feigns coughing into his fist, turning slightly to Richie and sending him a wide-eyed, what-the-fuck stare.

“Lastly,” Mike says, “to truly be able to fight the Beast, you will have to encounter it once without seeking it out.” Then, because of course, he says, “Most who have tried to go up against the Beast haven’t gotten past that last one.” 

-

“Riddles,” Stan mutters, “The man is a human riddle book.”

“ _Is_ he human?” Richie asks, chin in hand, shoulders jostling with every bump and gravel the wheels of the cart drive over, “He said he’s, like, 300 years old.” 

“219-ish, Richie, come on,” Stan chides.

The sun has painted the valley in deep orange. The leaves on the trees turn gold, and the prairies on their left resemble liquid amber. This land transforms everything around it into jewels and precious minerals at sundown, and, if he had to admit, it is one of the few aspects of this world that Richie likes. If he really does have to stay here forever, well, at least the sunsets will be pretty.

But that isn’t going to happen. They are going to leave.

Finally, after three long years, he will get to go home.

They will just have to figure out a way past a mythical death monster first.

Richie’s stomach rumbles. Stan clicks his tongue. “I told you to eat before we left.”

“Mike’s raspberry strudel looked as old and stale as he is.”

“Don’t be a dick, Dick,” Stan says, and Richie sighs, feeling bad. Mike’s straight-toothed smile and laugh lines pinching the corners of his eyes do not mask the obvious youthful invigoration that shines outward from Mike like a beacon. Something has kept him this way despite all the centuries Mike has spent behind the Wall. That is a thought Richie cannot begin to entertain, the very notion of it sending shivers down his spine.

“Have an apple,” Stan says.

“Apple?” Apple neighs. 

“When we get home.” Stan reaches behind and slips his arm under the burlap tarp that hangs over the back of the wagon. When the appendage returns with a shiny red apple and throws it in Richie’s lap, Richie feels a stab of guilt in his belly. “I’m not listening to your stomach growling the whole way back.”

Richie lifts the apple and examines it in the light. It, like the rest of the world, looks gilded. Maybe it’s the frustration at coming so close only to be knocked back again two paces, or perhaps it is the anger and restlessness slowly building inside Richie day by day, hour by hour, that makes him throw the apple over his shoulder. With an innocent shrug and an, “Oops,” the apple bounces on the gravel and rolls into the thick woods.

Or, maybe, he just wants to piss off Stan a little.

However, what Richie didn’t account for is Apple crying, “Apple!” and tugging so hard on the reigns to follow the fruit where it bounces off into the woods that she pulls the wagon off the road. 

“Richie!” Stan cries, and then, “Apple! Carrot, calm down!” and then, “ _Fuck_ ,” as they are sitting on the side of the road, tilted about twenty-degrees off their axis, with not one but two excited horses neighing and pawing the ground. 

Richie thinks he sees a vein popping in Stan’s neck and opts to get out of the wagon as quickly as possible.

“I think it rolled over this way,” he says, hopping over the side of the wagon and landing in the dirt. Stan stutters something at Richie, but he has already run into the woods, the trees enveloping all sound.

They’re like a cavern, these woods. Sound works differently once you’re under the shelter of the forest; bird songs echo everywhere at once, frogs croak, and the sound rumbles beneath your feet. Riche steps on a twig and the sound of it reverberates across the grass like a strong wind, and the water in a small pond a few feet ahead of him ripples.

Richie takes a deep breath. Time bends and twists and forms a knot that coils around your body and holds you still in place, while everything else around you carries on.

The apple sits at the edge of the pond, caught against a stone and some cattail plants. Richie bends to grab it, just as the crunch of leaves underfoot – hurried, frantic – startle him. The noise shakes the long grass moments before someone comes blundering into the pond, the murky water splashing Richie.

A boy has fallen into the water. When Richie gets a good look at him, it is instantly obvious that 1. he hadn’t meant to, and 2. he is running from something, or someone. 

Richie stares. The boy stares back. His eyes are blown wide, chocolate brown, and his hair curls below his ears, a collection of twigs and leaves burrowed inside it. His clothes are odd; all blue. A thin red line of blood streaks down his cheek from a cut across his cheekbone.

He is also staring at Richie, mouth fallen open.

A moment, only a brief one, before Stan comes running into the scene in a very Stan-esque calibre – leaping over bushes and stones, arms flapping almost annoyingly graceful – it looks like the boy’s mouth is forming the word _You_. 

“Richie, for fuck sake, where did you –?” he stops in his tracks, skidding on the moss, stares right at the boy in the water, and says, “ _Eddie?_ ” 

And the boy in the water says, “Oh, hi. Good to see you again,” and Richie’s brain skips a few tracks. A rumble comes from deep in the woods, somewhere where the trees shroud darkness that the eye can’t see beyond, and the boy in the water – _Eddie_ – says, “We need to go. Now.” 

Richie’s mouth is still hanging open, as is Stans, when Eddie pulls himself out of the water and grabs the both of them by their hands, insistently pulling them back toward the road. Richie is gasping, “Who – how –?” right up until they reach the road.

Amazingly, he is still holding the apple, throwing it to the excited horse the moment they are in sight once again. She catches it between her teeth, biting down and gobbling it up in two bites. Apple neighs, “Apple,” appreciatingly, while beside her Carrot stomps his hooves, happy for her but envious.

“What was that?” Stan asks, as the same time Richie says, “Who are you?”

“I’ll explain later,” Eddie says, and Richie is unsure who’s question he is answering. “We need to go now.”

“Yeah, you keep saying that,” Richie says, as Eddie attempts to climb in the back of the wagon. He reaches a hand out and grabss him by the back of his jacket. Eddie makes a noise of surprise when he is yanked down suddenly. Grasping on to the wooden grooves of the wagon, he continues to stare at Richie with those same wide, frightened eyes, and something inside Richie quietens.

“Listen. You look like you’re in a bit of a hurry, and that’s fine, but I don’t know if you noticed we have a slight problem with the …” Richie glances down at the wheel of the cart, the one that popped off when the horse got over-excited after Richie threw the fruit, and finds it perfectly attached as if nothing had ever happened, “… wheel.”

Stan is staring at the wheel as well, scratching his head with a dumbfounded look on his face.

Eddie says, “We can go now,” and shrugs Richie off, climbing the rest of the way into the wagon and disappearing under the tarp.

The growl rumbles the trees yet again, and that settles that matter. Richie and Stan jump back in the front and take off without another word.

When the sky has transitioned from golden orange to burnt umber, the words come, and Richie is hissing, “Who the shit is that?”

“Oh,” Stan stares ahead. His shoulders are tense, and there is a look on his face Richie can’t quite put a name to, “That’s Eddie. We met him last year.”

“ _We_ met him?”

“Well. You were unconscious,” Stan says, “for most of the time. Delirious the other part. Remember when you got stung by that thorn?”

Richie tries hard not to flinch at the memory. Yes, he does remember. A searing pain, unlike nothing he had ever felt before spreading beneath his skin. All the while, his vision played seesaw between pure darkness and blinding lights. He was in the woods, and then at the house with Stan. There were cool hands on his burning hot skin and a soothing voice in his ear.

At the time, Richie thought he was simply hallucinating. There was only Stan in the room, and he saw double. For a while Richie was content to believe that Stan had miraculously revived him from the brink of death, in a foreign, unknown world using herbs and remedies he barely understood, because he’s just perfect like that.

Now, when Richie thinks a little more deeper about it, he realises how in probable that concept is.

Stan bites his lip and says nothing else. Richie leans back against the seat with a deep breath, thinking about how he owes his life to a stranger who sits behind him, and hides beneath a sheet.

-

By the time they reach the town, Mike’s words _Look out for anything out of the ordinary_ are almost non-existent in Stan’s mind. What he does have on his mind include cooking a stew with the fresh mushrooms and herbs that have sprouted from the garden (they are most likely the last that will sprout before the chill off winter falls over them, so he plans to savour that) pouring himself a glass of ale that Richie stole from the tavern the other month, and going the fuck to bed. 

Those plans become sidetracked when the distant sound of shouting and cries catch their attention, growing louder as they approach. Richie looks at him with raised eyebrows, and Stan cracks the reigns and spurs the horses on faster. The wagon reaches the hill's apex, and it suddenly becomes very clear what the commotion is all about.

Two – no, three – separate people run in circles down below while the townsfolk either 1. chase after them, yelling and screaming, 2. throw vegetables, or 3. chase after them while yelling and screaming and throwing vegetables. One of the three leads the other, who holds a large pumpkin in their arms, the act itself making the running part quite difficult, and the third looks like they are just trying to dodge everything and everyone. They don’t appear to be doing such a good job of it.

Richie says, “You think that’s what Mike might have been talking about?” and, after a fond hum, “Kind of reminds me of us.”

The tarp behind them lifts, and Eddie sticks his head between the two of them. “Oh,” he says, “they’re getting the forks out.”

“Shit,” Stan hisses, and spurs the horses on to trot faster into Pottsfield.

The scene is even more catastrophic close up – the boy holding the pumpkin and the girl leading him wear what looks like costumes to mimic Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein. The townsfolk chase them in an attempt to protect their territory and, Stan has to admit, it is quite funny to watch them run with those bulbous, orange heads that sit on their shoulders.

It had been startling at first, as most things in this land were, to stumble across a town where the people wore nothing but pumpkins on their heads, eyes, mouth and noses carved out to resemble a Jack O Lantern. Stan got over it pretty fast, and they turned out to be nice enough people. Just mind the pumpkins, and don’t mention the masks.

Neither Richie nor Stan know what these people look like under the pumpkin masks. When the newcomer who runs around like a headless chicken almost knocks one of them down, the mask teetering for a moment as if it will fall, Stan finds he is more terrified than curious to find out.

“Dirty thieves!” and “Intruders!” are among the phrases being thrown at the newcomers when the wagon finally rolls into the town square. Stan jumps over the side before it has a chance to roll to a stop, Richie following suit.

The one holding the pumpkin stops dead in his tracks upon seeing them. His mouth falls open, and his eyes widen to the size of saucers. For one heart-stopping moment, he almost drops the pumpkin. _Almost_ , if not for Richie lunging forward right as it is slipping from his fingers, when he is jolted forward by the girl who ran into him from behind, and manages to catch it before it could fall and burst into a million juicy pieces.

“ _Easy_ there!” Richie grunts, safely lifting the pumpkin while the boy stumbles over his words, half formed when they rise to the surface. One of the bolts glued to his neck is hanging loose and the other is lost completely. The girl, who’s red hair is streaked with white paint on either side of her head, pulls him by his shoulders away from Richie, who grunts more profusely under the full weight of the large pumpkin.

“You don’t look like them,” she says.

“Yeah, you’re welcome,” Richie says.

“Who are you?”

“Someone who just saved you asses. Again, _you are welcome_.” 

“Maybe not quite yet,” Stan mutters, watching as the third visitor is being backed into a corner by a couple of very angry townsfolk holding very large, very sharp desert forks. Pointing, Stan asks, “That your friend?”

“Oh shit,” the boy gasps, and cries out, “Bill!”

“Leave him alone, you cabbage head fuckers!” the girl shouts.

Richie raises an eyebrow. Eddie jumps out from the back and mouths, “Cabbage?” at Richie, who shrugs in return.

Stan clicks his tongue. “Okay, easy there. This is their town, and they want to protect it.”

Richie heaves the pumpkin on his shoulder, and says, “I’m just going to give this back. I’d get in the wagon if I were you.”

“Wait, where are _you_ going?” Dr. Frankenstein anxiously bellows at Stan’s retreating back.

“To save your friend from being shish-kebabbed!”

The third, who the others called Bill, is being cornered against the side of town hall, and does a sort of zig-zag run to narrowly avoid being stuck with a large fork. One manages to get close, and skewers the cape he wears to the stone. Vampire was his choice of monster for this Halloween, if Stan had to take a guess. Auburn hair halls over one eye and his white shirt's sleeve is ripped, blood tainting the edges as if he’d cut himself on a thorn bush. There are many of them on the way to Pottsfield from the Wall. Stan remembers being pricked by a couple of them himself.

Out of the corner of his eye, Stan notices a familiar pair of shiny pointed shoes, a blue jacket, and an oval-shaped pumpkin head and shouts, “Jerimiah!”

Jerimiah pauses at the call of his name, cowbell raised high above his head mid-ring. The police marshals on either side of him protect their Mayor against the villainous intruder with their forks. All the lawmen of the town have those, while the others settle for regular dinner utensils.

They thrust their forks at Bill, who flattens himself against the wall as much as humanly possible. Stan, before he can think better of it, leaps to pin himself between the forks and Bill.

“Jerimiah, wait!”

Jerimiah turns to Stan and gives a shocked gasp behind his pumpkin mask, which remains perfectly neutral. Behind him, Bill makes a similar noise of surprise, however, more strangled. Stan imagines he expected to be skewered at that moment, given the way he curled into himself towards to wall and shut his eyes tight.

“Stanley!” Jerimiah cries, cowbell clanging as he thrusts it at Stan, “Why, thank goodness you’re here! These – these –” he stutters, barely concealed fury scrambling his words, “ _thieves_ seek to make a travesty of us all! Stealing from our flock. Why, right before harvest, too!”

The police give a shout and thrust their forks hard to the ground.

Swallowing down a flinch, Stan holds his palms up and says, “Alright, listen. Everyone just needs to take a deep breath, and –” lowering his voice so only Bill can hear, he says, “– get ready to run.” 

Behind him, with a voice strained in fear, Bill stammers out and, “What?”

Stan turns to look at him – dry paint clinging to the corner of his mouth, supposedly to mimic blood, red powder rimmed under eyes that shine a clear green in the setting sun, that are taking in the human features of Stan’s face – and says, “ _Now_.” 

He grabs Bill’s hand, and they run.

Richie is standing on the wagon's seat and is shouting, “Come on!” waving an arm wildly in the air. Eddie holds the tarp up for Bill when he comes running into the arms of his friends, who, after a short but tight embrace, lift him by his arms into the wagon. Stan’s feet have barely left the ground before Richie clacks the reigns, and they are off.

-

The frogs sing _Home on the Range_ to the fireflies who dance in rhythm to their throaty serenades, and Stan spends the entire trip home with his head in his arms, knees pulled up to his chest.

Richie drives them home in the dark, with only the glow of the moon, fireflies, and occasional moss infested street lamp to light their way. Owls hoot from the thick wood that accompanies them on their journey home, eyes glowing yellow and beady within the darkness. The world around them is loud, but unease in the pit of Richie’s stomach keeps him quiet.

At their backs, the newcomers whisper amongst each other.

“Where are we going?” the girl whispers.

“I’m not sure,” Eddie’s voice responds.

“Do you know them?” comes from one of the boys.

Eddie responds, “Um. Sort of,” and Richie tightens his grip on the reigns.

“Did you come from over that – that weird wall, too?”

Eddie says, “The Wall? No, I live here. My name’s Eddie.”

“Bev,” the girl says, and the one who isn’t Bill says, “Ben. Nice to meet you.” 

A soft, not quite timid but stammering voice, asks, “Are we … in danger?”

“I highly doubt that.”

“Would you tell us if we were?”

No answer.

Richie sighs. As it grows colder, he finds himself wishing they had the foresight to bring their thicker jackets with them, however Richie can confidently discern that neither he nor Stan expected to be out this late. An anxiety tends to creep up from Richie’s chest whenever he has to exist outside in the darkness of the woods too long, tickling at the back of his throat and itching the back of his knees. Stanley tells him it is irrational, and if anything were going to kill them, it would have done it by now, so on and so forth.

The thing is, Richie knows it is irrational. The knowledge does nothing to stop the fear that the next hoot of an owl or croak of a frog will be his last.

His ankle itches. Richie leans down to scratch at it, his shoulder bumping against Stan’s. He lifts his head but remains quiet for the remainder of the trip. 

The house bathes in shadows, save for the lanterns hanging from the porch awning that host the fireflies Richie caught to light the front facade and give them some leeway to navigate the woods. The dirt driveway remains pitch black in all the places that matter, which is the logs and stones and bushes where, if something sinister were to choose a place to lurk, it would most definitely be one of those options.

They need more fireflies. 

Richie parks the wagon in the regular parking spot by the barrel and well and cheerily announces, “Honey, we’re home!” and waits with a grin and an eager heart for Stan to roll his eyes, or scoff, or tell him to be quiet.

Instead of any of those things happening, Stan simply continues to sit with his gaze forward. The fretful light of the dancing fireflies highlights the curve of Stan’s nose, the edge of his eyelashes, and the stressed pinch in the centre of his forehead.

“Fuck,” he whispers, to himself and then again, “ _Fuck_ ,” to something else – possibly Richie, possibly to the swaying flowers or the pigeons sleeping under the awning, or the newcomers in the back.

Before Richie can say anything, Stan is up and out. Richie scrambles to follow as he is pulling aside the tarp from the back of the wagon where they’re all sitting, frozen and silent.

“Hey, Stan –” he attempts.

“Well?” Stan says to the newcomers, an irate sharp edge to his voice, expectant. “Get out.” 

They continue to sit and blink at Stan, frozen in place. His grip tightens on the tarp. With shoulders tensing, he half-shouts, “ _Now_ _,_ ” and Richie watches as they all near jump out of their skin in their hurry to exit the back of the wagon.

“Stan,” Richie begins, nervous, because Stan has now started to pace, and nothing ever good following him pacing, “Stanley. Pal. Stanny. You’re buggin’ out, man, what’s the matter?”

Stan stops short on his third round, shoes kicking up a small cloud of dirt, and looks at Richie as if he has gone mad. “What’s the matter? Are you kidding me right now?” He says, “Did you not see that shitshow back there? We’ll be lucky if Jerimiah lets us past the gates again!”

“And what if he doesn’t?” Richie asks, a tremor of anger fizzling up his chest, “What’s the big deal?”

“What’s the –” Stan stops, blinking, stepping back as if Richie’s words psychically shoved him, “Are you serious? Winter will be here soon, Richie, and that town –” Stan points into the dark of the woods, “is the only way we get through it. It’s all of our food, our money, our resources. Everything we need to not starve! And today we – I – you – why were you holding a pumpkin?” he yells at the one with bolts glued to his neck – Ben, Richie remembers – who’s eyebrows pinch with shame. 

“Look just chill out, okay?”

Stan says, “We’ve been through this before, Richie.”

“I know, but –”

“But?”

“What does it even matter now?”

Stan blinks at him. “Pardon me?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Richie says, words falling from his lips one at a time, and he is vaguely aware of the others watching them tensely from the sidelines, “because we’re getting out of here soon.”

“You don’t know that,” Stan says, “You don’t. I don’t. Not for sure.” Wiping a hand down his face, Stan turns towards to horses with a sigh and begins to unwind Carrot’s reigns. The horse lifts his head from the water barrel with a confused neigh. “But what I do know is we can’t take that kind of chance based on _maybe_.”

Carrot gives a huff as Stan climbs on him, and Richie asks, alarmed, “Where are you going now?”

“To do some damage control,” he says, and leaves.

Once he has disappeared into the trees, Richie groans loudly and kicks over the water barrel, spilling water everywhere. Apple rears up in fright, kicking her legs and shaking her head. Richie swears and rushes to calm her. 

“Apple? Apple!”

“Whoa, whoa, easy girl! I’m sorry, it’s okay, shhh, I’ll get you some more. Fresh. You’d like that, huh?” he whispers, stroking the front of her nose until she calms down. When she looks toward the woods and huffs, Richie tells her, “They’ll be back.”

Someone makes a choked-off sound to his left, and Richie turns to find the firefly lit faces of the newcomers gaping in shock. Eddie, he notices, has flit off somewhere.

“I’m _suh_ –” Bill starts, struggling, and Richie frowns, “Sssorry? Did that horse just talk?”

“Erm.”

“Oh my god,” Bev says, “you heard it, too.”

“Talking horse,” Ben mutters, complimented with a far off spacy gaze.

“Apple?” Apple says, and Ben falls down, the other two shouting and scrambling to catch him. 

Richie swears.

Eddie reappears from the either when they carry Ben inside and deposit his semi-conscious body onto the couch. Once a blanket is draped on him and tucked up to his chin, Richie watches from the doorway as Bill and Bev fall to the floor with their backs against the couch. Their eyes are rimmed with purple, and their skin is pale beneath the bit of makeup that sticks around. He realises they are hungry, exhausted, most likely dehydrated, and haven’t eaten in a while.

When Richie asks if they’re hungry their eyes light up, and even Ben mumbles a little.

Eddie is perched on the dining table so deathly still that Richie doesn’t notice he’s there until he turns on the gaslight and nearly shits himself. 

“What the _fuck!_ ” Richie hisses, clutching his chest as if he can still his heart hammering against his ribcage, trying to be quiet as not to alert the three in the living room. “Where did you come from? Where did you go?”

Eddie grins for a brief moment but swallows it down. He just shrugs and says, “I took a look around. This area of wood is pretty dense so it’s hard to see anything. What’s it like in the daylight? I think I can hear a river about, um, three-point-two miles south, if I had to guess – no, wait, three-point-four. Yes. I don’t remember it being this dark last time I was here. Is it seasonal? I’ve heard of seasonal darkness, my friend told me about it once, but I don’t get to see him often as he’s always locked up in his big old house. He needs to get out more, I guess, but don’t we all?”

Richie blinks. Then he blinks again. Eddie continues to stare back at him, brown eyes almost black in the low light, and unblinking. His mouth moves faster than Richie can form full sentences in his head.

“Um,” he starts, “I guess I’ve never really thought about it much? It’s a hellscape any time of the year, but … maybe it’s not as dark in Summer, now that you mention it. Do you want food? Water?”

Eddie nods. He looks down at his knees and says, “I would love some water, thank you.” 

He fills a glass of water and hands it to Eddie. The tips of their fingers brush for a second, and Richie is surprised to find his skin strangely warm. Maybe it’s the way he is bundled up in all those clothes or is hunching his shoulders like he needs to keep warm.

“We’ve got bread, and Stan has some left-over jam in here, somewhere,” Richie mutters, searching the cupboards.

“Oh, I’m not hungry.”

“Fine.”

Richie prepares the bread and jam in silence, Eddie watching him from the table, still sitting, swinging his legs now and then and sipping at the glass of water.

When the silence starts to become intolerable, and the tap of Eddie’s fingernails against the glass makes Richie’s teeth hurt, and puts down the butter knife and says, “Eddie, was it?”

Eddie hums. Richie turns towards him, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter. His hair falls from behind his ear, and Richie hurries to push it back. Eddie continues to stare.

“Stan, um. He mentioned that you were there that night that I got hurt.”

“Poisoned,” Eddie corrects, “Yes, I remember. You were flipping between throwing up and passing out in quick intervals. It was pretty impressive.”

Richie clears his throat, pushing the embarrassed blush that rises up his neck down to the depths of Tartarus. “Well, I just. I want to say thank you. You know, I, um, I’d probably be dead right now if it weren’t for you showing up when you did, so,” – a pain like nothing he’s ever felt spreading up his calf, Stan’s worried grey eyes replaced by warm brown, curls that smelt of pine needles and honey, hands on his face and Richie cried _I_ _’_ _m going to die I_ _’_ _m going to die_ and a voice whispered back _I won_ _’_ _t let you_ – “Thanks. For that.” 

Eddie’s unblinking stare is softer now, and the skin in the corners of his eyes wrinkle when he smiles. It’s endearing, and Richie finds it weirdly difficult not to smile back.

“Excuse me?”

He jumps only slightly when Bev pokes her head into the kitchen, peering timidly around the doorway with an awkward, pressed smile.

“Sorry,” she says, “But do you, um, have a bathroom somewhere so I can wash off –” she waves a hand over her face, indicating the dried makeup and paint in her hair “– all this?”

Richie tells her to climb the stairs and find the first door on the left. After she gives another awkwardly polite smile and flits away, Richie remembers the others in the living room waiting for their bread and jam, and hurries to take the plate over to them. Ben is sitting up but still fairly out of it when Richie returns, he and Bill talking quietly amongst themselves. Bill, sitting perched on the arm of the sofa, stands upright when Richie enters the room.

Richie rolls his eyes and drops the plate on the rattan coffee table. “Relax, I don’t bite,” he says. “Eat. And sit wherever you like.”

Every day for months after he and Stan stumbled upon this house – it was somewhere on day seven or eight of sleeping in stables or inns, when friendly innkeepers took pity and allowed them to stay for a night – Richie had slept fitfully, worried the owner would return and knife them in their sleep. It looked well enough abandoned, but in that ‘The cobwebs have barely begun to decorate the cornices and the fireplace is freshly snuffed’ kind of way.

He and Stan slept in the living room for the first three weeks, huddled together like two pre-teens during a sleepover, Stan with the fire poker clutched in his white-knuckled hands, Richie with a kitchen knife in his. Eventually, it became evident that the owner of this home, whoever they were, was not coming back when Richie pried open the trap door to the basement one day, and found him swinging in the middle of it, head cocked at a sickening 90-degree angle. Richie had screamed so hard he knocked himself backward into a tall wardrobe, which knocked over a box atop a box which alerted Stan, who came running down the stairs so fast he nearly tripped.

They buried the man by the river stream, a few minutes walk from the cottage. Lugging the poor man’s body that far was probably a more traumatic endeavour than simply finding a nice spot for him in the garden, but neither Richie nor Stan would have been able to sleep with him being so close.

In his pocket, Richie found an old heart-shaped locket. Upon opening it, there was a picture of a young man smiling with his arms spread wide, the Hollywood sign behind him.

“Thank you,” Bill says, taking a piece of bread, “Um …?”

“Richie,” Richie says, “And don’t mention it. Hey, would anyone mind if I bring the horse in here?”

-

Apple is in the living room when Stan finally walks through the door in the morning.

She stands with the patchwork blanket thrown over her back, and her head is peeking through the open window, greeting Carrot outside. Stan sighs. Richie – sitting curled up on the couch, writing in his journal under lamp light – always insists on bringing the horses inside when Stan isn’t there to say no.

“Good morning,” Richie says without turning around. His long black hair hangs loose and unrestrained around his face, and his glasses sit folded on the arm of the couch beside his elbow. The pencil scratches away at the page at lightning speed.

“Morning,” Stan mutters, throat scratchy and raw. He closes the door quietly behind him. “You’re awake.”

Richie hums. “Couldn’t sleep,” he says, and upon moving closer, Stan notices the punched pillows and blanket beside him. “Where were you?”

“It got late and Carrot was tired, so we stayed at the Inn.”

Richie hums again. “So, how did it go?”

Stan sighs, eyes fluttering shut. The events of last night are both a blur and a vivid stain on his memory.

“Well, I all but got down on both knees and begged Jerimiah for mercy,” Stan says, throwing his jacket over the back of the couch. “I apologised about fifty times and asked him to forgive our wily friends from over the Wall,” he waves his hands in the air. “I might’ve also made something up about how it’s a custom to feast on a pumpkin when entering a new land. I don’t know, Richie. He’s agreed to give us a second chance.”

Richie closes the journal, bookmarking it with the pencil, and looks up at Stan for the first time. His eyes are weary, and his lips are chapped. Stan feels a stab of guilt in his stomach. “You did good, Stanthony, okay? I’m just happy you’re back.”

Stan swallows. When they were in Derry, before they climbed the Wall, casual words of comfort and endearment was not a common feature of their relationship.

Regardless of the colourful protests showcased on television, the men and women carrying banners and posters spelling the words _FREE LOVE_ in bright, bubbly letters, it was a movement that Derry hadn’t quite been ready for. While Stan secretly sat attentively in front of the television in his home, watching the broadcasts and news anchors detail this so-called Sexual Revolution his parents always scoffed at and turned the television off quickly when it came on, Derry remained the same.

“What do you think about that stuff that’s happening in the city?” Stan had asked Richie one night.

Richie snorted, and asked, “You mean all that queer shit?” and snorted some more, like that was the funniest thing in the world. Stan pressed his face further into the pillow and thought, if an outsider were to see them like this, curled up in Richie’s bed with the blankets tucked up to their armpits, they would assume.

A handful of months later, Richie met Stan by the quarry where he was set up for bird watching, and dropped onto the picnic blanket next to him with a cigarette already lit, and a shiner begging to form. Stan nearly fell over himself asking Richie what had happened, but Richie, voice wavering only a small amount, says, “Bowers pounded me ‘cause he thought I was fuckin’ trying to mack on his little cousin.”

The words had to circulate in Stan’s brain for a minute before they made sense, and eventually, he asked, “Were you?”

Richie had simply kept his eyes forward, expression blank, and shrugged.

Stan watched a red cardinal peck at some leaves for a while and said, quietly, “I think it’s neat, the free love thing,” and that, somehow, was all he’d needed to say, Richie understanding perfectly. 

Pushing himself out of his thoughts, Stan clears his throat, and asks, “Speaking of, where are they all?”

“Upstairs sleeping,” Richie says, “I gave one of them your bed, by the way. Hospitality and all that.”

Stan keeps his sour expression out of Richie’s line of sight, ducking his head as he climbs the stairs. Richie is mad at him, Stan can tell. Bringing the horse inside the house is one of the clear giveaways, and casually allowing a stranger to lock himself inside Stan’s bedroom is another. If it weren’t for Richie’s very obvious loan of his own bedroom to one or possibly more of their guests, he would call him livid.

Stan has half a thought formed in his mind of what he would say or how he would greet the person behind his bedroom door when he gets up there, but the initial attempt of it dissolves the moment the door swings open just as Stan reaches for the handle. Sleepy blue eyes and a nest of auburn bedhead greets him on the other side of the threshold, as Bill blinks up at him and stops in his tracks, his face doing several things before his mouth stammers out a quiet, “Hello.”

“Hi,” Stan says back, cautiously, “Um. Good morning.”

“This is your room?”

“That it is,” Stan says.

Bill nods, his arms fidgeting by his sides as he seemingly fights to decide whether to do something with them or keep them stiff at his side. The paint and grey makeup has been washed off to reveal pale skin and natural dark circles beneath his eyes. Stan’s mattress is filled with a mixture of cotton, hay, and soft grass – he re-stuffed it last summer – and while Stan is used to it, he can imagine it wouldn’t be all that comfortable to lie on when you’re used to the comforts of a store-bought mattress.

That, and the experience of finding yourself trapped in a strange land with no clear way of getting out wouldn’t help much, either.

Bill fiddles with the cuff of his sleeve, suspenders hanging by his hips, and Stan bites the inside of his cheek.

“We’re all really sorry about yesterday,” Bill says, “We just – the pumpkin thing – we’d been wandering the woods all day and when it started to get dark we. Panicked, I guess. Wha-what if we don’t find any food? You know? So Ben saw the pumpkins in the pah –” pause. “The patch, and he just took it.”

“Bill,” Stan cuts in, quietly.

“Yeah?” Bill says, looking a bit like a startled rabbit.

“Water under the bridge.” He smiles. “Just maybe don’t show your faces there for a while.”

A loose, crooked smile finds its way onto Bill’s face. “Cool. And that won’t be a problem.” 

_Cool._ The word causes a brief moment of pause, but before he can think to query it, Bill says, “I’ll, um, get out of your way. Where’s the bathroom?”

Stan hooks a thumb over his shoulder. “First on your right.”

Bill flashes a brief thankful smile and squeezes past. He is barely two inches shorter than Stan, and the collar of his shirt smells of pine and dirt. For a second Stan finds that he has forgotten he can move, feet glued to the floor, and Bill’s shoulder bumps his on the way past.

Stan ducks into his room and shuts the door quickly behind him.

The first thing he notices is the window is open, allowing a soft, morning breeze to enter, fluttering the thin curtains. Taking a quick glance around the room, he sees that everything seems to be in its place. A stab of shame for checking follows. 

The book he left by his bedside sits crooked, like it had been picked up and examined. On the bed, the covers are tossed to the side, the sheets below it pulled and ruffled.

Stan places his face in his hands and breathes deep.

The sun has settled comfortably in the middle of the sky when Stan wakes up. Changing out of yesterday’s clothes, which has begun to obtain a thin outer veil of grime from riding in and out of the woods a series of times, and showering before wandering downstairs, Stan is pleased to note two things.

One, Apple has been removed from the living room and returned to the outdoors, and two, there is a small bird sitting on the open windowsill.

Stan sets the kettle to boil. Outside, the clouds have drawn in, and it smells as if it will rain. He closes his eyes and takes in a deep breath, and for a microscopic moment, he finds he has forgotten there is anyone in this house besides him and Richie. The reminder comes with a smack on the back of his head when he turns, reaching for the cupboard where they keep the oats, and finds Eddie sitting up on the counter beside the sink, a spoon hanging from his lips. Stan jumps backwards into the wall.

Eddie frowns and, pulling the spoon out of his mouth, he says, “Everyone keeps doing that.”

Stan swears, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Please get off the counter,” he says. “Fuck.”

“Fuck,” Eddie echoes, like he is testing the word in his mouth. “Richie says that a lot. And the redhead. And the boy who passed out yesterday, and Bill. Is this an over the Wall thing?”

“No,” Stan says, “I don’t know. Shit, Eddie, what – it doesn’t matter. Where is everyone?”

Eddie cocks his head to the window, finally sliding off the counter. He has scared the little bird away, a single blue feather left behind on the windowsill. “Outside. Richie ordered everyone to help him carry some water from the well.”

“Okay. You didn’t go with them?”

Eddie says, “Someone had to stay behind and make sure you didn’t run off again.” Suddenly becoming serious, he says, “You know, it really isn’t good to run off into the woods like that. Last night was cold, and that jacket you had on wasn’t adequate clothing enough to keep you warm. If you ask me, you’re lucky you didn’t catch a fever. Did you at least eat something when you reached Pottsfield? Something warm?”

“I, um,” Stan croaks, “Soup?”

He gave most of it to Carrot, too exhausted and high on adrenaline to be able to stomach much of anything, but he does not tell Eddie, who seems relatively satisfied with this answer. Despite slightly longer, curlier hair, Eddie looks the same as when Stan first met him, right down to the clothes on his back. The events of that night are startlingly vivid in Stan’s mind, where if he closed his eyes he could feel the warm, summer rain on his skin and hear Richie’s helpless, sick whimpers. He wonders if it is equally as vivid for Eddie or if they remain the same as Richie’s, and what Stan sometimes wishes it were; a fever dream.

Eddie turns his head toward a noise from outside that catches both their attention, and Stan notices the cut on his cheek, the one sliced across his skin and dripping blood when they found him in the woods, has calloused over into a thin, pink line.

He is about the mention it when Eddie grimaces and says, “I think they’ve figured it out,” just as the noise grows louder – the noise, Stan realises, is shouting. And a lot of it.

“Figured what out?”

Eddie does not answer the question, but instead looks at Stan with a soft, almost sad expression, which turns his stomach upside down.

Stan wastes no time running outside when the shouts escalate only to find Richie, standing in the centre of the garden with a bucket kicked over at his feet, water absorbing into the dirt. Bill is giving as good as he’s getting, standing tall to shout back at Richie, shoulders square and neck flushed pink with an obvious exertion mixed with anger. Beside him, Beverly looks to be a torn between breaking the two up and standing up for her friend, while Ben does not appear conflicted in the slightest, pulling Bill away from Richie by his shoulders and pushing himself between them, holding a hand up to Richie in a warning.

Stan clamps two fingers between his lips and blows hard. The high whistle cuts through the leaves in the trees and the volatile tension in the air, and everyone stops.

“The hell is going on!” he shouts. “Richie?”

Richie comes to stand beside Stan. Before he’d interfered, Richie had been crying _You_ _’_ _re a liar!_ over and over.

“What?”

“I’m –” His cheeks are red. Tears linger in the corners of his eyes, and Stan feels his heart lurch upwards into his throat. “We’re … they … I can’t, Stan, I’m sorry.”

With that, he walks off down the trail leading back to the river, holding his stomach like he is about to be sick.

Stan turns to the three newcomers, singles out Bill and says, “Tell me what that was about.”

Bill remains pressed-lipped and grim-faced, looking at Stan with something akin to fear that turns the skin on his arms into gooseflesh, and in the end, it is Bev who speaks.

“Stan,” she says, her soft voice slow and cautious. He notices Richie has given them all a fresh pair of clothes, and it is one of Stan shirts she wears, loose around her shoulders and the hem tied around her slim waist. “When you came here from Derry, it was the Sixties, right? Richie said 1965?”

“1966,” he corrects, “Why? Why did you say it like that?” The _sixties_.

“See, um,” Bev inches closer, her hands twitching by her sides. Something in her stance makes Stan think she’s about to take both his hands in hers and call him _Honey_. “The thing is for us – outside, I mean – the year is 1993.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ( _hazy shade of winter_ by simon and garfunkel plays in the background)


	2. Act 2.

Richie, kudos to him, manages to make it all the way to the top of the hill before keeling over and emptying the contents of his stomach into the berry bushes that live there. Considering he hasn’t eaten breakfast that morning, or dinner the night before for that matter, it isn’t much, and he remains miserably dry-heaving for a few minutes. Once finished, Richie falls back over his knees and stares up at the sky, sniffling and wiping away tears from his cheeks. The clouds have drawn. It looks like it will rain.

Denial swims inside his head still and dances around Bill’s words. It is the slow reveal that while he has been in this world, his own has carried on without him that packs the hardest punch. _It_ _’_ _s not true they_ _’_ _re lying they_ _’_ _re liars it_ _’_ _s not true they_ _’_ _re just fucking with you Richie,_ spins on repeat, the effect of it dizzying behind Richie’s eyelids when he squeezes them tight.

Just as he thinks he is going to heave again, a voice behind him says, “Deja-vu,” and Richie opens his eyes to find Eddie standing over him, his upside-down frown appearing as a smile. He quickly sits up. 

“Sunshine,” he groans, “We need to stop meeting like this.”

Eddie scoffs and plops himself down on the grass beside Richie. His movements are feather-light, so much so that he barely makes a sound as he hits the earth.

“I’ll say,” Eddie says, “You won’t have any of the outer linings in your esophagus left to show for yourself. Then you’ll be fucked.”

Richie gives him a sharp, mocking grin, and asks, “Is that your word of the day, or something?”

Eddie nods, “You’re a very good teacher. I also learnt shit, piece of shit, shit faced – when you offered a bottle of ale to Bev – and fuck nugget. That was when you walked into the kitchen without turning the lights on and stubbed your toe on the corner. That one’s my favourite.”

Instead of asking Eddie how he knows that, Richie says, “You forgot the absolute top tier pinnacle of cuss words, because if you’ve gotta know any it’s _Jumpin_ _’_ _Jehoshaphat!_ _–_ that’s when Stan steps in one of Carrot’s piles of horseshit, because he’s a fuckin’ old geezer.”

Eddie laughs, a quick bubble up his throat as high and sweet as a bird’s, and for the smallest of moments, Richie forgets the grief that made him run up this hill in the first place.

They sit watching the horizon while rain patters down on the tops of their heads, and Richie asks, “It’s not true what they said, right?”

“Richie,” Eddie says. Just his name.

Desperately, “It’s all bullshit, right?”

A deep frown wrinkles the centre of Eddie’s forehead. His silence is all the answer Richie needs.

“Oh.”

“Time works differently here than it does over the Wall. It’s all true.”

“Shit, Eddie, I think I might be sick again.”

“Don’t,” Eddie says, “I’m genuinely concerned for the blueberry bushes.” 

“I just can’t believe it,” Richie says, voice dangerously close to a whimper, “All these years we’ve been gone … shit, my parents. Stan’s parents. They’ve been looking for us for three fucking decades, wondering where we went and what happened to us, I’m – Mike fucking _lied_ to us.”

Eddie frowns. “Mike?”

“All that time he was spouting those fuckin’ riddles not once did he mention anything about time moving slower in here!”

“Well.” Eddie’s voice takes on a slightly offended lilt when he says, “Did you ask?”

“How was I supposed to know to ask?”

“Well, then how was Mike supposed to know you didn’t know?”

“How the fuck were we supposed to know anything about this, Eddie!” Richie yells. “Not once in three years when I was raking a garden or carrying pales of water down a hill or delivering rosemary bouquets to weirdos with pumpkins for heads did anyone mention the fuckin pocket dimension bullshit of this world! And then – and _then!_ When I finally have some clue, a hint of a way out of this place, that gets pulled out from me, too! There is no way out of here.” Richie scoffs, rudely, “The Historian, my ass –”

“Okay, listen!” Eddie turns to face Richie better. The material of his pants is damp, and the knees stained green from grass and dirt. He looks at once like a furious animal, brown eyes grown dark and ready to pounce at Richie, claw his eyes out. Richie, despite this, remains rooted in place. “Two things. First, Mike is not to blame for any of this, so don’t drag him under the rug just because you’re angry and need somewhere to aim. You showed up at his house, knocked on his door and demanded answers, and he helped you as best as he could. Mike’s been my friend – my _only_ friend – for a very long time, and I’m not going to sit here and let you curse him out when he isn’t here to defend himself.

“Second,” Eddie says, taking a breath, “You’re wrong. There is a way out, just as there’s a way in. A door isn’t a one-way passage. It just doesn’t work like that.”

“What …” Richie allows the breath he’d been holding in his lungs to leave in a shaky exhale, “do you mean? How do you know that?”

“Because.” Eddie pulls his knees into his chest and stares at them. “Because my father came from your world. And he went back, too.”

Richie is shocked, jaw fallen open and breath taken from his lungs. After a few failed attempts at real words, Eddie sighs, gets himself comfortable, and launches into a story.

“When I was a child,” he says, “he’d tell me stories about the world that existed beyond the Unknown. How it was similar to ours but different in so many ways. I can still close my eyes and see them; flying machines, steam engines, villages and towns but larger, busier. Eventually, after a few too many stories, the homesickness must have overtook him. He became quieter, and the stories he’d tell me were sadder. He began to say things like ‘if we went back,” and he’d tell me about all the places he’d take me to see. Every time he’d say these things my mother would get angry and lash out. Never in front of me, but I could hear them arguing at night when they thought I was asleep.

“One day, father told us he was taking a trip into town, and that he’ll be back soon. By the time nightfall hit we realised he’d gone. Left. I think he, um. I think he wanted to take me with him, but he knew mother would never allow him to do that.

“A couple weeks after he left, I got this,” Eddie opens his jacket to pull out a small card from the inside pocket and shows it to Richie, who nearly pulls a Ben and faints at the sight of it. It is an old, worn postcard from Derry, Maine. “It was hand-delivered to me by someone from Pottfield, and I was confused until I read the message on the back. This is where you’re from, right?”

Numb, Richie nods. He asks, “May I?” and, with only a moment’s hesitation, Eddie hands Richie the card. The front captures an above view of the town, the words _Greetings from Derry!_ flash across the top in bright red lettering. On the back reads simply, _To bluebird, love Dad._

Handing the card back to Eddie, who takes it with both his hands, Richie asks, “Your dad really made it out?”

“He didn’t just make it out,” Eddie says, “He made it past the Beast. If he could do it, why not you?”

A chill passes through them on the hilltop. Richie hugs his chest, hands gripping elbows, and Eddie’s hair flutters lightly in the wind, falling over one eye.

Dangerously, Richie feels the insane desire to reach out and brush them away.

-

The drizzle of rain that arrived and remained for three days coats the soil in a teardrop pattern of light and dark polka dots surrounding Stan as he stabs at the mushroom garden a little too forcefully. A baby button mushroom sits on the lip of the spade, and Stan stares down at it woefully. The days are growing colder faster than he can keep up with, and this most likely will be the last harvest they will be able to do before the snow comes and freezes crisps everything up into an icy lawn ornament. 

With a sigh, Stan allows the small mushroom to fall gently into the basket by his side. The last couple of days at the cottage have been tense, to say the least, after the extra special announcement curtesy of Bill, Bev and Ben.

Stan stabs at the ground again.

After Richie stormed off, Stan proceeded to stand in the middle of the front garden and non-react. He non-reacted so hard he ended up giving himself a headache, which then morphed into the biggest migraine he had ever experienced, that knocked him out for a couple of hours until Richie came home. No one spoke that night except for the three Bs who huddled together on the living room rug in front of the fireplace and tried their hardest not to be too visible whenever Stan and/or Richie came downstairs. Stan cooked dinner and chopped fruit and tried not to pay any attention to the way Bill’s eyes followed him about the room, cautious, like he was waiting for something. What that was, Stan doesn’t know. Probably to combust, that seemed like a pretty liable option.

Stan stabs at the ground. Again.

In his dreams he sees police lights and voices echoing through the woods. Flashlights catching on damp leaves and sharp edge rocks and missing persons posters stapled to telephone polls, church services where their names are mentioned, and his mother crying in her rocking chair in the den –

 _Stab_.

“Yeah, I think that dirt is properly beaten up now,” a voice says behind him, and Stan peeks up through dark curls against the sunlight to see Bill, hands-in-pockets, staring down at him. “Good job.”

“Thank you,” Stan says, “It’s all part of the technique, see. You have to threaten the soil enough so it’ll grow what you want it to, but not so much that it won’t grow anything at all.”

“Is that why that fuh-flower keeps eyeing me?” Bill asks, coking his chin over at the flowerbed by the kitchen window. It sways back and forth aloofly, halting when it notices it has attention.

Stan snorts. “No, it’s just a temperamental little shit. I haven’t watered them yet, so they’re probably annoyed.”

“I cuh-can’t –” Bill pauses, wipes a hand down his face and says, “You keep just saying things like that. Like it’s totally normal that fuh- _flowers_ can feel annoyed. It’s bogus.”

Stan swallows down a wince. _Totally. Bogus._

“Yes, well. You keep saying things like _that_ and you don’t hear me complaining.”

To be fair, Richie does enough complaining for the both of them whenever he hears a foreign phrase or slang that makes the two of them scratch their heads. This morning Ben let a casual _awesome_ slip out, and Richie slammed two pots together and cried, “ _Dost thou speak the Queens English or nay!_ ”

He’s been on edge more so than usual lately, twitching and swearing like a sailor due to, Stan is only guessing, lack of sleep given the way the _click click click_ of the typewriter can be heard from his bedroom all night long. On top of that, he hasn’t been eating much, and it is starting to piss Stan off. The last thing they need right now is a relapse of three years ago, Richie skinny and ashen-faced with hollow cheeks, bundled up in a blanket in front of the fireplace and politely shaking his head at Stan gently placing a bowl of fruit in front of him.

It isn’t just them that is feeling it. The two-bedroom-house situation means, while Bev and Ben have graciously offered to sleep in the shoebox study, Stan has the pleasure of hosting Bill in his room, with Eddie sleeping in Richie’s. The last two nights Stan has laid awake staring at the ceiling, listening to Bill mutter in his sleep and toss and turn on his pile of blankets on the floor, fighting between waking him or waiting it out. Eventually, the second comes to fruition and Bill pulls the blankets over his head, tucking himself up and falling quiet once more.

Bill mutters a small, “Sorry,” and sits cross-legged on the ground. Stan feels a prick of annoyance against his temple, as the ground is damp and dirty, and those are Stan’s pants he’s wearing.

Then he remembers being fifteen and lost, walking into a town that hasn’t left the eighteenth century.

“It’s okay,” Stan says, “It’s not your fault.”

Bill bites his bottom lip, turning it pink.

“Do you want any help?” Bill asks.

“Um,” Stan mutters, wiping the back of his hand against his cheek, “Yeah, okay. Can you pick those winter cherries for me? There’s an extra basket by Apple’s stable,” he says.

Apple neighs at the mention of her name, and Bill swivels around to the small olive-green bush spotted with smaller, heart-shaped fruits. “Those?”

Stan nods. “And there’s some rosemary next to it, a little to the left – yeah. Pick as many as you can, although I don’t know how much of it will be good.”

They should have been harvested last week, but.

Well.

Bill nods obediently and sets to work. Gently plucking the small red winter cherries, tearing open the shell to reach the fruit within, and asks, “Mushroom stew again tonight?”

Stan pauses. “Yes. But I can make something else if you guys want.”

“No!” Bill says, “Nuh-no, I didn’t mean that. I was going to suh-say, um, good. It’s really good, the way you make it. You know, I’m-uh not usually such a huge fan of mushrooms, but, um, the herb you put in it is nice. What is that?”

Stan raises an eyebrow. “Basil?”

“Buh-basil. Yeah.” Bill mutters, immediately turning back to picking cherries, the tips of his ears pink.

Stan bites his tongue for as long as he can manage, which is until Bill walks back over with a basket full of cherries and rosemary, and the words, “Have you always had that stutter?” roll off his tongue on their own accord. 

Bill halts halfway to placing the basket on the ground, startled, and Stan internally smacks himself. “I’m – that was rude, you don’t need to answer that.”

Bill places the basket on the ground, too lightly.

Stan is kneeling beside the bluebells when Bill clears his throat, and says, “I was in an accident when I was seven. Blunt force trauma to the head. The de-doctors think that’s what caused it.”

Stan stares, hoping his jaw isn’t hanging open too much. “Shit?”

“Shit,” Bill agrees, “It’s a lot better now than it used to be. Just ask Bev, when I was thirteen and fuh-fourteen I could barely get a whole sentence out. And now?” He opens his arms, grinning, “I’m eighteen and attending community college to study literature in the town I grew up in.”

Standing up and dusting the dirt off his pants, Stan says, “And trapped in a world that should only exist in storybooks.”

“Yeah, well.” Bill shrugs. “I guess that last part isn’t so bad.”

Stan plucks a rosemary from Bill basket and pretends to examine it. The delicate purple buds are tinted grey at the tips. “What’s Derry like these days, anyway?”he asks, sitting the rosemary behind his ear.

Bill takes a short moment to think, and answers, “I don’t think Derry ever really changes.”

Stan has seen the history books. The only difference between his Derry and the older Derry is cars and asphalt. Everything else is much the same, even down to the people.

For a moment, Stan feels impelled to ask Bill about his parents, if they’ve moved away or if they’re still in the same place they were before, but doesn’t get a chance.

A toad leaps out from the ether and lands square on top of Bill’s head, who gives a little shout of fright and fumbles around, but not enough to shake the creature free. It grips its small toad feet tighter into Bill’s hair and croaks indignantly, hanging on. Stan tries his hardest not to laugh.

He fails.

“Help?” Bill squeaks.

Stan clamps a hand over his mouth to stifle the giggles tumbling shamelessly from his lips. “Okay, okay. Hold still.”

The toad does not particularly want to get off, finding Bill’s hair quite soft and comfortable, it seems, as when Stan reaches out and takes it gently from the sides to tug it away, it does not budge. Finally, with some coaxing from Stan _(Okay, little buddy, come on._ _Out of there, now. There you go),_ the toad comes loose. Bill winces as it’s pulled away, hair sticking up at all angles. As he hurries to smooth down, Stan observes the toad. It’s a shade of woodland green, fairy tale, and peculiar as most local fauna and flora here tend to be. Stan holds it in both hands, and the toad seems content enough with that, staring back at Stan with slow, mismatched blinking.

“Huh,” Stan hums, “He’s quite cute.”

Bill raises an eyebrow. “Did cute mean something different in the sixties?”

Probably, but Stan shoves that thought down deep to pick and prod at a later time.

“Here,” Stan holds the toad up to Bill’s nose, who leans back. “Give him a stroke. I promise he isn’t poisonous.”

With narrowed eyes and a wrinkled nose, Bill reaches out with every ounce of caution in his body to touch the toad’s head with the tip of his finger and swipe it down the length of his back. The toad croaks in earnest, and Bill settles down somewhat.

“Okay, that was kind of sweet.”

Bill does it again. The toad croaks and closes its eyes. Stan thinks it looks quite pleased, and wonders if this is one of the bunch that likes to sing old timey tunes to them as they’re driving home through the forest. Maybe if he hums the first few bars of _Somewhere Over the Rainbow_ it’ll join in.

The wind changes and flurries Bill’s hair, brushing his bangs in front of his eyes. Stan is reminded, suddenly, of the way he looked when they first met, the swept hair over his face, and the look in his eyes when Stan stepped in between him and the forks.

Before then, Mike’s words to Stan and Richie in the den.

“You okay?” Bill asks.

“Hm? Oh, um. It’s nothing. Just thinking about something a friend of ours said recently.” Stan grins. “Nothing to worry about. Help me get all these inside before it starts raining.” 

_A toad and a bird. One is an ally, and the other a warning._

-

By the time night falls and the weather shifts from A Little Chilly to Balls Freezing Cold, Richie is more than positive he is coming down with a case of severe cabin fever. The mind-numbing boredom began around the time Eddie was repeatedly sick in the upstairs bathroom, and shifted to incomprehensible jitters as Stan was cooking dinner. This being when, sometime after throwing up for a good fifteen minutes, Eddie asked if they had any spaghetti – to which Richie cackled from the couch, “Eddie spaghetti! Get it?” while the others gaped in disbelief. Stan and his wooden ladle included.

The Jitters fill his skin and tickle his bones, watching Ben struggle over a crossword puzzle book he’d found in the den, and scratched his head over _Originally Printed 1937 London, England_ for a few eye stabbing minutes. Bev is curled against his side being purposefully unhelpful ( _What_ _’_ _s a five-letter word for abominable?_ He asked, to which she replied, _Santa)_ with Bill next to them, curled under the same blanket with his legs stretched out, and his chin in his hand, trying not to be too obvious about the eyes he is making at Stan from across the room.

Richie rolls his eyes and says nothing.

Eddie is flitting about the kitchen, basically stepping on the back of Stan’s ankles to watch him cook. His eyes follow his every move, and Stan, opting to ignore the second shadow he’s newly acquired, doesn’t even flinch.

Like Bill, whenever Stan turns his head in the direction of the living room, Richie averts his eyes and pretends to be reading the book open upside-down in his lap when Eddie does the same. 

Eddie, ashen-faced hours before, eyes wide and pleading as he shoved a small vial into Richie’s hand, his own trembling and sweaty, and begged, “Please take this and throw it away somewhere I can’t see.”

“What is this?” Richie asked, staring down at the bottle near empty of pale, silvery liquid, the glass embossed with black lettering in a language he can’t read.

Eddie replied, “Medicine.”

Richie looked at him, at his wide brown eyes and strained pinch between his brows, and asked, “Who are you?”

Eddie never got the chance to respond, face turning green once more, and pushing away from Richie to shut the bathroom door.

Maybe Eddie wants to ask where Richie put _whatever_ it was he gave him. Maybe he is struggling not to. Either way, like the coward that he is, Richie won’t hold his gaze long enough to find out which one it is.

He threw it in the river. If they’re lucky, the vial should be halfway into the Neitherlands by now. Eddie should be thankful.

(Should he? For what?)

They eat in mildly comfortable silence, not so awkward that it makes Richie want to beat his head against the table anymore than he already does, but still.

By the time nine o’clock ticks by, Richie decides enough is enough. Changing clothes and slipping on his thicker boots, Richie pulls on his coat hanging by the front door and makes it halfway out of it before Stanley, Hawk Eyes McGee, bippity-boppity-boops himself to Richie’s side and asks, “Where are you going? It’s late.” 

Richie grins, hair tied back, glasses on tight, securing the coat around his neck, announces, “I’m off to get drunk. You coming?”

“Wait,” Bev says, rolling herself up off the floor, red hair stuck to one side of her face, “the magical land of Fantastica has a _bar?_ _”_

Richie laughs. “I don’t know what the fuck that is, Chickadee _,_ but yes.”

Another thing that is driving him absolutely up the wall: the pop culture references that mean absolutely nothing.

Earlier, from Ben: “It’s like the _Labyrinth_.”

To which Bill followed with, “Are we expecting a visit from the Goblin King?”

And Bev replied with, “I don’t know about you boys, but I for one would let David Bowie climb through my window and kidnap me any day.”

And when Ben snorted and said, “Bowie didn’t kidnap Sarah, he kidnapped her baby brother,” Richie wanted very much to scoop his eyes out with a spoon.

Shaking the memory away, Richie practically throws himself out the door without waiting for another word from anyone.

The funny thing – or the _ironic_ thing, depending on your point of view – is that out of the three towns in the great Unknown, the one that is built primarily of humans is by far the creepiest.

Richie and Stan visit it on occasion for necessity – they will occasionally buy some of Stan’s berries, if they ever find themselves desperate. The sweet bells are the favourites, and they tend to be partial towards the weeping widow flowers. The residents are all pale like they haven’t ever seen the sun, and mostly speak in hushed voices. 

The pros, if you take away almost everything else, are the taverns in Rosewood are the best in the Unknown. Richie has stolen from them many times.

Bev plants herself eagerly in the front right next to Richie while Stan stews in the back with a neutrally displeased expression, Eddie sitting beside him looking unambiguously insipid. Richie allows the wagon to pause at forks and crossroads to chance a look back and make sure Eddie is 1. still conscious and 2. hasn’t coughed chunks all over Stan, Bill and Ben.

He thinks of the small glass bottle he threw into the river for the remainder of the trip.

Rosewood, despite its drawbacks, has an adequately standard nightlife. You can always hear, and sometimes smell, the tavern before you see it. Richie parks the wagon down the street beside a clothing store and flower shop, and everyone jumps out, Eddie practically tripping over his feet to do so.

He wobbles for a moment on flat, hard ground, and Richie holds him by the shoulders to still him.

“Easy there, cowboy,” he says, in an over-exaggerated western drawl, “usually the jelly legs come after the alcohol, not before.”

Eddie says nothing.

Richie frowns, and lowering his voice, asks, “You okay?”

“Yes,” Eddie huffs, smoothing thick hair off his forehead. There is an irritated pinch in the curve of his brow, “I just haven’t been in Rosewood in a long time. But I’m fine, don’t – let’s just go.”

Richie watches Eddie march off towards the tavern. “Aye aye, captain,” he calls back, and earns himself a displeased over-the-shoulder glower in return.

The town seems to be setting up for the annual harvest festival; people string banners and lights from the top of buildings in a criss-cross pattern above their heads, and children run around with orange leaf garlands as crowns. A stall set up near the _Crows Ink_ tavern stops them as they walk past, the merchant offering one to Bev woven with delicate baby’s breath and pine needles.

“Oh,” she says, blinking at the garland, “Thank you, but I don’t have any money.”

“On the house,” the old woman says, pushing the garland toward Bev, who takes a cautionary step back into Ben. “It will look so lovely with your hair.”

“It’s okay, really.”

“But I _insist_ ,” she says, and Bev steps further back until she is between both Ben and Richie.

The woman does not manage to get another word of encouragement out, as Eddie steps forward and tells her, firmly, “She said no, Daisy.”

All eyes flick to Eddie, except for Stan, who looks at Richie with befuddlement and mouths, _Daisy?_

Daisy narrows her eyes at Eddie until they’re slits, her paperwhite lips parted a sliver. Eddie holds eye contact until she slowly retreats with the garland and lowers it back on to the table with the rest.

“Enjoy your evening, children,” she says, and turns away to call out to others who might be in the mood to spend their money. 

A feeling of unease settles in the pit of Richie’s stomach that he quickly shoves down in favour of stumbling after Eddie, who makes off towards the tavern in a forward much fit for a knight entering battle. He grabs his wrist from behind and hisses, “What the _fuck?_ ” in Eddie’s ear. Stan follows at their ankles, taking hold of the cuff on Richie’s sleeve, glancing nervously back at the old woman.

“That old coot’s a traveling merchant. She’s shown up on our doorstep one too many times selling those exact garlands and other –” he looks at Richie “– things.”

“Those are _my_ sweet bells she’s selling,” Stan hisses, “And my weeping widows.”

“Both cause temporary paralysis.” Eddie raises his eyebrows. “I’m sure you’re aware?”

Further away, the new kids are arguing.

“I’m – no, Ben,” Bev is saying, “I’m going to get drunk hopefully until I pass out. Then when I wake up, I’ll be in my bed in my shitty little dorm room, and all of this will have just been a very bad dream!”

Richie winces.

The plan is good, but no dice. He knows because it has been his many times before – he’s lost track of how many times Stan has had to pick him up off the floor after drinking himself into a semi-conscious stupor. 

Ben is giving Bill a tired look, and Bill is saying, “What? Whu-what the fuck was I supposed to do? She’s your girlfriend.”

Ben ignores him and turns towards Richie. “Is she okay in there on her own?” he asks, indicating to the doors of the tavern Bev just waltzed through, lanterns making her red hair look like fire.

“Eh,” Richie muses, “Probably. Folks in Rosewood don’t bite. Mapleborough, on the other hand …”

Ben peaks, and rushes to follow after Bev.

Stan whacks him in the stomach. 

“Ow,” Richie says, even though it didn’t hurt, “What?”

“Stop freaking them out,” Stan says, “They’re under enough stress as it is.”

Bill is somewhat looking at the scenery around him like a lost puppy until Eddie sighs and takes him by the wrist, dragging him inside the tavern.

“They’re fine.”

“They’re _not_ fine.”

“You,” Richie says, booping Stan on the nose, “need to relax.”

“I am fuckin’ relaxed,” Stan says, through gritted teeth.

“Yeah that’s it, pop that blood vessel, baby. The throbbing vein in your forehead is so sexy.”

Stan flushes. Squaring his shoulders and looking back towards to woman, now trying to sell a floral tiara to some child wearing a periwinkle blue cape, he says, “Where did she get my flowers?”

“Oh. So, this is about the flowers now?” Richie says, “Did you know they were poisonous? I’m genuinely curious.”

Stan does not dignify that question with an answer.

Richie elbows him in the ribs. “Come on, lover boy. Your beau is in there, all alone, probably staring wide-eyed at a pint of ale like it’s going to eat him.”

Bill, in fact, had drained half a pint by the time Richie and Stan manage to dawdle inside.

Richie is impressed. 

Stan sighs through his nose and takes his sweet time approaching the table before ceremoniously planting himself beside Bill with a miffed expression. Richie rolls his eyes to the ceiling and flags down the bartender, Rodrik, who waves and calls out, “Evening, Richard!” from the other side of the bar.

Rodrik’s fun, he’s young, probably too young to be working in a place like this, and has a little bit of a crush on Richie, which Richie appreciates for exploitive reasons which makes him feels somewhat guilty. For example, when Rodrik kindly looks the other way when Richie winks and slips a bottle of whatever’s closest beneath his cloak.

“New friends?” he asks, nodding towards the table. His golden curls bounce with him, reminding Richie a little of Eddie.

“Yup.” Richie says, “Just arrived a few days ago. Still fresh from over the Wall.”

Rodrik’s eyes brow wide, and he stammers, “From over the Wall?”

“Where else?”

“I thought the world over the Wall was just a myth?”

“Roddy, we’ve been over this. Where do you think me and Stan came from?”

Rodrik makes a face. “You know I don’t believe any of those stories you tell.”

“Alright, fine. Don’t believe me. But go ahead and ask them what a Sunshine Harvester is and watch their brains pour out of their ears. I dare you.”

“Whatever you say, Richard,” Rodrik says, laughing. “The usual?”

“Yes please,” Richie says. 

Richie slots himself in the chair between Stan and Eddie while Rodrik prepares the tray of drinks, drumming his hands on the table. 

Stan’s gaze is caught on the bar where Rodrick pours a row of pint-sized glasses, and pales. “Richie,” he whispers, leaning over to press his shoulder against Richie’s, “We have to pay for that.”

“Do we?”

“We _do_.”

“Okay, well. Fine.” He says, “We’ll make it back. Just sell more of your mushrooms or bluebells or whatever the fuck to Daisy. Or better yet,” Richie leans back in his chair, “we will be out of here soon, and it won’t even matter.”

Stan’s lips twitch for half a second before he turns away.

The drinks arrive, and Richie takes one for himself before the plater hits the table. The others happily help themselves, even Eddie who, while still looking quite green, brings the beer close to him and takes a cautionary sniff. Richie decides to keep one eye on him, just in case.

Stan remains grumpy and cross-armed, and when Bill asks, “Are you having one?” he replies with a curt, “No.”

“Staniel,” Richie says, “doesn’t know how to have fun.”

Stan shoots him daggers sharp enough to pierce his skin. “I know how to have _fun_ , Richie.” 

“Yeah?” Richie slides a pint towards him. “Prove it, Uris. Put some hair on ye’ chest, ol’ chap!”

Out of the corner of his eye Ben is giving them a strange look, but Richie ignores it. Stan continues to send a whole armory at him before sitting up straight with an indignant sniff and lifting the pint to his lips. Tipping his head back, Stan drinks three large gulps, Addams apple bobbing in his neck before slamming it back on the table while Bev claps and cheers loudly.

A stray droplet runs down his mouth and chin, which Richie notices Bill is particularly intrigued by, and hides a smirk behind his own pint glass.

“No more!” Stan announces, to which the others protest loudly. “No! Someone needs to drive you idiots home.”

Richie bellows, “I trust those horses with my life, Stanley!”

“Apple has a terrible memory,” Stan says, “And Carrot just follows her wherever she goes! No, we’ll be stranded in the woods and left there to die.”

“Okay, but hang on a second,” Ben says, raising his hand. Bev snorts into her drink. “I have a question. Which one is Apple and which one is Carrot?”

Silence.

“Are you fucking serious?” Bill says.

“They look exactly the same!” Ben insists.

“They fuckin’ _talk_ – _!_ ”

“They’re _identical!_ ”

Bev bangs on the table. “Girls, please!”

Stan begins to laugh.

“They don’t look exactly the same,” Eddie cuts in. He still looks like he would rather drink toilet water than the barrel ale this bar serves, but his cheeks are beginning to lose the green sheen and regain their rosy pink flush. “Apple has a white spot on her nose.”

“Actually,” Stan says, “That’s Carrot.”

“Oh. Well fuck me then.”

Richie loses it. Fists banging on the table, beer coming out of his nose – it’s a whole thing. The others find it hilarious as well, and soon enough, they become a spectacle of themselves, drawing the eyes of other rowdy tavern visitors who quite possibly now feel the need to compete in their rowdiness. 

Somewhere after “Let’s play a drinking game!” – and someone, if Richie were to rack his brain he could take a guess at either Bill or Ben, suggested that game should be twenty questions – the group splits up. Beverly cast one starry-eyed glance over at the far wall and announced, “Benny! Darts!” before grabbing her boyfriend’s arm and dragging him over with no ifs or buts to say about it. Ben then took hold of Bill’s sleeve last second and towed him with them. As Richie watched them stumble over to the dart board strapped together like a disenchanted daisy chain he thought back to the early days of stumbling around towns and villages, barely allowing Stan to move out of arms reach.

Now Stan sighs, and after a brief pinch of his fingers to the bridge of his nose begrudgingly gets up to follow them without a backward glance, and Richie will mosey over to the bar to chat with Rodrick or make fun of other patrons without batting an eye.

Perhaps they have become too comfortable.

Eddie is chugging down the rest of his drink like he’s running out of time.

“You look less green, sunshine,” he says, grinning at the dirty look he receives in response. “Juice kicking in?”

“This shit is disgusting,” Eddie says, pushing the pint glass away with his middle finger. 

“That it is,” Richie replies fondly. “Want more?”

Eddie takes a moment to think, eyes narrowing on the empty glass before he decides, “Yes.”

Content in watching Eddie swallow another mouthful with a sour look on his face and enjoying the mild buzz that fills his brain, Richie leans back and watches Bev throw darts at a board. He watches her throw three in a row that hits the bullseye, and the cheer that follows each one is high and happy, high-fiving Ben. Stan and Bill linger to the side, leaning against the edge of the bar, and it looks like neither of them knows what to do with their hands. 

“So, what’s your story?” Richie asks.

Eddie is watching the liquor twirl in the glass. “My what?”

“Your story,” Richie repeats. “Everyone has one. Me?” he says, putting on an old-timey voice, one that makes him think of old green leather recliners and pipes, “Well, I feel a certain kinship to red riding hood, you see. Running into the woods and getting lost. Waiting for the big bad wolf to show his face.”

Eddie blinks at him. Richie clears his throat and continues, “You turn up out of nowhere with your bag of wonders like a woodland nymph and looking like – Well. For all we know, you could be here to rob us,” he finishes, only half-joking.

Eddie looks at him square in the eyes and says, “I’m not here to rob you.”

“Then what are you doing?”

Eddie looks at him for a moment. Just looking, eyes flicking between different features if Richie’s face, before he says, “I’m going to go play poker,” and pushes his chair back hard enough that it screeches against the floorboards.

He goes to play poker.

“Hostility will get you nowhere Eddie-kins,” Richie calls out to Eddie’s retreating back, “Try some breathing exercises!”

“Don’t call me that!” Eddie bustles, turning around for a fraction of a moment to glare.

Richie thinks he looks good in these clothes, and out of the blue ensemble he showed up in. More universal, less outlandish. The pants definitely make certain aspects of him look good, says a little voice in the back of his mind. Richie’s cheeks burn over it, and he thinks he might have already had a bit too much.

Once Bev lands not three but seven bullseyes in a row and attracts the eyes of too many regulars who aren’t used to newcomers bringing this much attention to themselves, they gather their things and prepare to leave.

The three are back to hanging off each other in their daisy chain, and Eddie has won himself a new hat in the poker game. Richie grabs Stan and dances with him in a dramatic waltz outside the tavern, until Stan’s cheeks turn pink and he is batting Richie away, laughing. If he were more sober, he would have given a second thought to the look Bill is giving to the ground, to the door of the tavern, to the flower lady’s stall, and to pretty much everything but to the hand he has pressed to Stan’s lower back, and their laced fingers. 

Walking along the path some feet away from them is a man carrying a crate of books, which come tumbling to the ground after he trips on a raised piece of concrete.

One of the books lands by Eddie’s boot, and he instantly bends and picks it up.

“Here, let me help,” he says, handing the book back to the man. One odd look is first given to Eddie as a whole, but then a more concentrated, stranger look is given to the rolled-up sleeve past his elbow, exposing his forearms, before the man shouts and falls backward.

“Whoa! Sir, are you okay?” Ben asks, detaching himself from the chain and stumbling tipsily forward into Eddie, who jolted back over the outburst.

“Is everything alright?” Stan asks. 

“Yes,” Eddie says. “Let’s just go.”

Then the man turns around and shouts at their retreating backs, unstuck from his frozen stupor. “Devil!” he yells, and Eddie stops in his tracks. “You are not welcome here!”

“The fuck, dude?” Bev says.

“Hey!” Richie shouts back, “You got a problem, buddy?”

The man does not respond, and when Richie spots him through fuzzy vision, he has already collected his books and carried on, but Eddie’s fists are balled, and the look in his eyes is one of desperation and upset when he says, “Let’s _go_.”

He makes his way back to the wagon, and doesn’t wait for the others to respond.

-

Like an unbalanced tightrope walker teetering on the edge of drunk and tipsy, _Home on the Range_ is sung in the back of the wagon. Tremendously off-key.

Stan urges the horses to go faster, where beside him, Richie hides his grin to the best of his ability, humming along and tapping his foot in time with the song. Eddie is sandwiched between the two of them, his shoulders jostling every time Richie taps his foot. He breathes deeply through his nose, long, concentrated breathes.

“Do we need to pull over?” Stan asks and receives a curt, _“_ _No,_ _”_ from Eddie in the same breath, before the sentence has reached its climax.

“Okay,” Stan says, shrugging, “But if you’re going to puke do it on Richie.”

“A _hem_ ,” Richie says.

“Really, I don’t mind pulling over if you –”

“I’m fucking _fine_ , Stan,” Eddie snaps. His have remained as balled fists ever since they left town, and now they rest on his knees. Eddie sits slightly bent forward, as if he really is about to throw up, or is preparing to leap from the wagon.

Stan catches Richie’s startled expression over the top of Eddie’s head. The singing in the back has paused.

“Okay, um …”

“Why is it so cold here?” Eddie asks, hugging his middle.

“And dark,” Richie adds, squinting behind his glasses to peer into the woods ahead of them. The lantern hanging off the top of the wagon casts a yellow glow over the path ahead enough where they can see six feet in front of them, a glowing ball in the sea of darkness.

“How far is Rosewood from the cottage?” Richie asks.

“It’s not as close as Pottsfield, but –”

“But we should have been back by now,” Eddie says. His eyes are wide and unblinking, flitting around in the darkness like he can make out every pine needle and stone. “Did you take the right path?”

“I took the exact road we used to get here,” Stan says.

“Yeah, but you were riding in the back,” Richie says.

“I know the way to Rosewood!” Stan says, “There’s only one damn road.”

“Then why are the trees getting thicker?”

And this is true, Stan muses, looking through the all-encompassing darkness of the wood, a darkness that he has never before seen and, more worryingly, ever been in before. If the road he was so sure he followed was the road leading home from Rosewood, why are the frogs not signing, the fireflies not dancing in time with their songs? Why is there a chilling cold that is growing even colder the deeper they ride into the forest?

Where are they?

From the back, Bill sticks his head cautiously under the curtain of burlap and asks, “Is ev-vuh-ery thing okay?”

Stan stops the wagon. “Fine,” he says to Bill in what he hopes is a casual, reassuring tone and smiling in what he hopes is not an anxious, neurotic twitch. “We’ve just, um, it looks like we’ve been turned around. But there’s nothing to worry about, we’ll just head back the way we came and –”

“Stan.”

The tone of Richie’s voice isn’t so much the sole factor which gives him pause, but rather the tremor that runs through it; soft, frightened, wavering over the _a_ and falling short just before the _n_. Like he has seen a ghost.

Richie is staring frozen ahead with his eyes wide and blood void from his face, and Stan turns.

And he sees it.

The Neibolt Street Church School, the one that sat on the edge Derry, now sits in the middle of the woods at the end of the road. In many ways, it is very much what Stan remembers of it; decrepit, sun-bleached, and standing upright through stubbornness alone. Tales of curses and rumours of several murders that allegedly had been committed inside the four walls whispered across Derry for years since the early 20th century and found their way to the school playground and sleepovers, told over torchlight and under bedsheets. There was a period of time, a very good chunk of it between third and fourth grade, where Stan couldn’t even hear the words _Neibolt Street Church School_ without wanting to cry.

“Stan?” Richie says again, voice a ghostly whisper. He reaches out to grasp Stan’s shoulder, but Eddie is caught between, and his fingers curl against his sleeve instead. The other’s poke their heads completely out of the back, and Stan hears a gasp.

It’s far, but from the faint glow of the lamp the shines on the signboard leaning at an angle against the rickety stone steps. In singular black letters, it reads:

**IN MEMORIAM**

**STANLEY URIS AND**

**RICHARD TOZIER**

“Oh my god,” Bev breathes beside Stan’s check. Her breath turns to frost against her lips, and her green eyes blown wide with terror as she says, “You’re _them_. You’re the two boys who disappeared all those years ago. Of course you are.”

Before he understands what he is doing, Stan jumps out of the wagon, shoes landing in the dirt with a crunch, and begins to run towards to church. He hears his name called at his back but he does not stop, determined to reach the church as if compelled by some unknown force, a creature lurking at the edges of his mind and whispering in his ears, _run, Stanley, run_. He trips on a stone at the foot of the stairs and catches himself on the signboard at the edge of _In Memoriam._ The stairs themselves are chipped, the treads are worn in from years of shoes walking up and down them. The doors open easily with a slight push, and then Stan is inside.

The church is dark and cold, even colder than outside, cold like a freezer. _Or a tomb_ , Stan thinks, the thought rising up from the back of his mind, _perhaps the ghosts that live here are excited for a bit of company._

A single candle sits on the alter. It is lit, an unpromising flame in the dark. Somehow this makes the room feel even colder.

The door shuts behind him. The force of it sends a rush of stale air at Stan, dust along with it. Fists pound on the other side and Stan hears his friends shouting for him, but they are muffled like they are underwater. Stan’s ears ring in the quiet of the night within the church. Not even a rat scurries along the floor.

“I’m okay!” he calls out to them, hoping they can hear. “I’m – shit.” He tugs on the doors and finds they have locked themselves.

“Try and find another door!” Bill shouts. His words are hard to make out. Muffled, as he is talking with a handheld over his mouth. “Or a window!”

“Another door, yeah.” Stan whispers to himself, blinking through the darkness as his eyes slowly begin to adjust. The pews sit in neat rows facing the church's front, bar one that angles strangely to the right like it has been pushed. Apart from a cross and a bible left open on the altar, and a long coat hanging against the wall in the far corner, the church is empty. The altar is angled as well, and suddenly Stan remembers the story of the Sunday school teacher and her two students who were killed behind these walls, back in Derry.

The sound of something heavy falling to the left of him makes Stan start and shout, whirling around in the direction of the loud crash. _You always hated that painting_ , a voice says in his head, and it sounds suspiciously like his father, _used to_ _turn away whenever you were in the room. Couldn_ _’_ _t even look at it._

The painting in his father’s office, of course; a woman playing the flute, her head too long and eyes too black, mouth curled into a wicked grin. Stan used to dream that she would come into his bedroom during the night and begin to eat him very slowly while he laid there, helpless and frozen. She always started with his fingers.

“Okay, snap out of it,” he whispers to himself, “Focus. Back door or window. Come on.”

He thinks, _some light would be helpful as well_ , and just as the thought is barely flying by, he spots a stack of candles by the front door and a matchbox lying beside them.

Stan burns through three match sticks before he is finally able to light the candle – the flame and the warmth it brings instantly eases some of the anxiety pushing down on his chest. Somehow, with the candle in his hand, Stan finds it a little easier to grasp the fact that he is standing in an abandoned church that belongs in his home town, in another world.

What happens next is a little harder to swallow.

Stan turns around, eyes scanning the room for another exit or a window he could open ad shimmy out of when the coat that hangs in the corner moves. It moves right before his eyes, and it grows legs, arms, and even a head pops out from the neck hole and begins to move towards him.

It is a man, but not a man, and Stan finds himself frozen in place, unable to move as the thing creeps closer to him, his features slowly appear under the light of the flame. Dully, he realises the shouts of the others outside have stopped.

The movements of the thing walking towards him are not quite sluggish, but somewhat like it has only just regained its legs' mobility and has to undergo the tedious process of learning to walk again. One foot in front of the other drags along the floor, scrapes loudly against the rough wood, and even catches on a nail and nearly trips, its arms flying out statically to catch itself in mid-air. Then, the face appears – powder white and chipped around the edges of a terrible grin, elongated and warped by the red paint that cuts up through its eyes. Its hair is red as well.

It takes Stan up until the point where the creature is standing barely a breath away from him to realise he is staring at the face of a clown, and this is as out of place as the church he stands in. 

A few moments later, he realises he is looking at the thing Mike referred to as the Beast.

It opens its terrible mouth and speaks. Two words, in a mockingly calm voice; “Hello, Stanley.”

Stan must shout, or scream, as the next second he is on the ground, the candle lying beside him, and the others have begun to call his name again.

 _“_ _Stan!_ _”_

He hears his name called from the left, from the right, from behind and right in front of him. “ _Stan! Stan!_ _”_ From the corner of his eye, shadows move behind the stained-glass windows, hands pushing against them.

The clown moves closer to Stan and holds its palms up to him. The fingers beneath the snow white gloves are clawed. “Oh, no no! No need to be frightened. I’m not here to hurt you,” he says, words curling strangely around the word _hurt_. 

“Who are you?” Stan demands, crawling backward until his back hits on the pews.

The creature tilts its head, and Stan notices it has blue eyes, as blue as Bill’s. He blinks and the colour changes to a warm dark chocolate brown, like Richie’s, before they’re back to blue once more.

“Me?” It asks, holding a hand to its chest and bowing modestly, “Well my name, Stanley, is Mister Gray, but my friends – oh no, my very special friends, Stanley, that call me Pennywise.” He moves closer still, and the colour of his eyes shift from river blue to ice blue, so cold that a fire nearly burns behind them. “You too can call me that, Stanley, if you like.”

“How do you know my name?” Stan asks, reaching for the candlestick.

“Oh, I know all about you and your little friends, Stanley. All about them.” It grins. “And I know _everything_ about you. Oh! I have been ever so eager to meet you, Stanley!”

The creature jumps forward, the frills around his neck fluttering with his movements. Stan jerks backwards involuntarily. “Won’t you sing a song for me, Stanley? I would love it so much if you did. Just like you sing to Richie –” It lowers It’s voice into a pitiful tremble, cracked red bottom lip sticking out “– when he’s frightened. Would you do that for me?”

Ignoring it, and through gritted teeth, Stan whispers, “You don’t know anything.”

The Beast clicks his tongue and wags a clawed finger at Stan. “Why, I do. See, I know your secret, Stanley,” it says, in a mocking sing-song, “your very big secret. The very scary one. The one you don’t want Richie to know.”

Stan swings the candlestick right into the Beast’s eyes. While it is lurching back and hissing in pain, Stan scrambles to his feet, running to the door. He pulls and pushes with all the strength in his body, but they still won’t budge. The others are pounding on the windows outside, calling out his name. Stan hears something like the flapping of wings, a stone bouncing off the windows as if they’re made of rubber, and a scurrying along the floor. The clown bends over in pain, growling and baring Its teeth at the bible lying innocently at Its feet.

Bill stands beside the altar, staring at the clown with wide eyes, and Stan uses the distraction to jump over the pews to reach him, holding the candle out as far as his arm can stretch.

 _It doesn_ _’_ _t like the light,_ he considers, noticing the way the Beast’s eyes follow the flame and do not stray. His eyes, which have changed from ice blue to a burning orange, nearly red.

“Bill!”

Bill reaches out and grabs Stan by the wrist, pulling him close. “Shit, are yuh-you okay? The fuck is that?”

“That,” Stan says, “is I think what Mike refers to as the Beast.”

“What,” Bill says, “is the Beast? And who is Mike?”

And it is at this point where Stan realises that he and Richie may have, quite majorly, fucked up. 

“I promise I’ll explain everything when we get out of here,” Stan whispers, keeping close to Bill, holding the candle outwards like a sword. He wishes the _when_ didn’t feel like an _if_.

“How did you get in here?”

“There was a huh-hole un-nun-der the wah-wall,” Bill stammers out, squeezing his eyes shut. “I crawled under eh-it. Looks like someone’s truh-tried to geh-get out that way bub-beh-before.”

From the middle of the room, Pennywise approaches them at a half-angled waltz. The image is as equally ridiculous as it is completely horrifying. “Buh-buh-buh-Billy!” It says, voice curled into a cruel, sardonic drawl. “Is that _you_ , Billy? Oh, is it really you?” 

Bill’s face turns rather pale, visible even in the low light of the room.

“How does that thing know my nuh-name?”

“Don’t listen to It,” Stan urges, growing desperate. The shroud which had previously fallen over his eyes, the one that forced him to run into the church, is beginning to lift. “It doesn’t like the light,” he says, and waves the candle at the clown once more, and watches as it flinches away. He wishes the others would hurry up – their voices are louder now, more frantic. He hears Ben and Bev calling out for Bill, Bev frantically searching for the hole Bill crawled through as if it would reveal itself to her if she demanded it loud enough. He hears Richie grunting with effort, following rhythmic pounds of something heavy hitting the side of the building. He does not hear Eddie.

“Light?” Bill mutters, and without taking his eyes off Pennywise of taking his hand away from Stan’s wrist, he digs into his pocket to pull out a lighter.

“Now,” Pennywise says, “that isn’t nice at all. Not at all! I’ve waited _soooo_ _–”_ the word drags, and his voice warps around it to sound like a pipe scraping against metal, an echo through a deep tunnel, “long to meet you, Billy. And this is the hello I get!”

“What duhh-do you mean?”

Stan hisses, “Don’t listen to It!”

“I know you, Billy,” the Beast continues, “I know all about the day you wish you could forget. I know all your fears, all your secrets.”

The clown jumps and lands on the tips of his toes on one of the pews, perched like a gargoyle.

“Shut up,” Bill says.

“And yes.” The clown smiles. Wide, awful. “It was all your fault.”

“Shut _up!_ ”

The clown begins to laugh, a high titter of equal abhorrence than with nails scraping down a chalkboard, and for a moment, it feels as if Bill is going to launch the lighter at Its face. The clown begins to sing, _“_ _Row row row your boat, gently down the stream._ _”_

They need to get out. They need to get out, they need to get out –

 _“_ _Merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream!_ _”_

The doors at the front of the church burst open with a crash. Ben and Richie hold between them what looks like one of the legs from the signboard out the front, which they have used as a joust to break down the door. The Beast himself startles, arms waving out in an exaggerated performance as he turns to glare at the group standing by the door.

“Holy shit, what the fuck is that?” Stan hears Richie cry, right before the clown turns its head the rest of the way to stare at them front on, all while its front is still facing Stan and Bill.

In her hand, Bev holds the lantern that hung from the roof of the wagon, and at the sight of Pennywise she uses all her might to launch it at the creature. There is a brief moment where It lunges at the lantern mid-air and catches it in Its hands, a deep bellied roar tearing from Its throat.

Stan uses this momentary distraction to take Bill’s hand and pull him towards the back of the church. Now with the door open, the hole Bill used to crawl into the church is visible, and together they scurry under as quickly as possible while behind them, the others do the same in the opposite direction.

Once outside, the boys collapse against the side of the church house, hands clamped over their mouths and breathing heavily through their nose, listening to the rageful cries of the Beast. It sounds as if It is tearing at the floor, the walls, the pews – everything, and tossing them around the room. Its footsteps pound loud and heavy from what sounds like right behind them on the other side of the wall, and Stan feels Bill’s hand tighten around his. He does the same until he is sure both of their knuckles are white.

 _“_ _Where aaaare you?_ _”_ Pennywise sings from the other side of the wall, his voice right above their heads. For a moment Stan is convinced he can hear the sound of their hearts pounding in their chests, or smell the sweat on their skin.

 _“_ _Little pig, little pig, let me in!_ _”_

Stan squeezes his eyes shut and waits for everything to be over.

Beside him, Bill jumps to violently that Stan is sure the Beast has gotten them, but when he opens his eyes there is only Richie, too-big coke bottle glasses perched on his nose, pressing a finger to his lips. He helps them to their feet, and they run to where Ben, Bev and Eddie hide at the front of the church. Bev throws her arms around Bill, and Eddie seems to be rifling through his pouch.

“Where have you been?” Stan hisses.

Eddie doesn’t answer. Ben whispers, “We have to get back to the wagon.”

Stan squints into the darkness to where Apple and Carrot are waiting patiently where they left them, unaffected as if they have no idea what is happening.

“We’ll never make it in time,” Eddie says just as he pulls a long, branch-like root from his bag.

“I’m sorry?”

“Listen to me.” Eddie takes a second to look at each one of them dead in the eyes, his own unblinking and serious. He settles last on Richie, and says, “I have a plan to get us out of this alive but you need to trust me.”

“What are you going to do?” Ben asks, “Fight it? With that?”

“No,” Eddie says, “If we try and fight, we’re dead. If we try and run, we’re also dead.” His fists tighten around the root, brows furrowing. Taking a deep breath, he asks Richie, “Do you remember that story I told you about my father?”

Richie perks, visibly taken aback by the question. Stan glances between the pair, curious.

“I do,” Richie says.

“I think I know how he did it,” Eddie says, and then –

Stan isn’t quite sure of the events leading from them crouching in the bushes to standing out in the open while the Beast stares them down like a hungry panther, but that may have something to do with him blacking out the moment Eddie jumped up and ran straight into the prowl. Eddie urges them all to get behind him; root clutched behind his back. Richie lingers at his shoulder and nervously asks Eddie what he is doing, who just snaps at him to be quiet.

“There you all are!” Pennywise says, back arched enigmatically.

“When I say so,” Eddie says, “cover your eyes and run back to the wagon.” When they all immediately start protesting, Eddie snaps, “Just do it!” 

“Oh, hello,” Pennywise says, stalking down the stairs one large shoe at a time. His gaze locks on Eddie and only Eddie, an unnaturally large grin stretching across his face. The light from the moon gleams off Its teeth. “You’re new. You’re _different_ , aren’t you?” He laughs, and the sound of it makes Stan’s blood curdle. “Yes, I bet you will taste absolutely delicious.”

 _“_ _Now!_ _”_ Eddie cries, and cracks the root in half.

As it turns out, _cover your eyes_ was not so much of a demand but rather a strong suggestion as to when Eddie breaks the root, a light as bright as the sun explodes outwards from it in a mist of sparks like a thousand supercharged fireflies.

With all the breath in his lungs, Eddie blows the sparks towards Pennywise, who has stopped dead in Its murderous march towards them.

Stan’s eyes burn, and he cannot keep them only any longer, covering them with his hand and turning tail to run back in the direction of the wagon as fast as he can. The others scurry behind him – someone catches his hand, and someone else grabs on to the back of his jacket. They unintentionally yank him back so that he nearly falls, and for a moment, Stan’s heart stops, thinking the Beast has gotten him. But in the end, it is just Richie – Stan hears his ragged breath by his ear, the scent of beer still lingering – and somehow, someway, they manage to make it back to the wagon.

Carrot and Apple whinny as they approach, Stan slamming into one of the horses as his legs turn to jelly, clutched at their strong neck to stay upright. Someone hauls him up onto the wagon, and at this point, Stan realises it is safe to open his eyes again. The clearing isn’t quite back to its regular darkness, but the light lingers enough to give the illusion of a magical twilight. The sparks from Eddie’s root slowly float to the ground to fizzle out like embers.

Everyone is shouting on top of each other, and Stan’s hands are shaking so bad he almost drops the reins. Bill sits half on top of him, their legs twined and crushed together in the front seat while Richie twists and cranes his neck around, crying, “Wait! Where’s Eddie?”

“I’m right here!” Eddie responds from the back of the wagon with Ben and Bev, where he very much was not a second ago, making Bev scream and jump away. “Go now! Go!”

Stan clicks his tongue and snaps the reigns, all while Richie is still standing, staring at Eddie with his jaw hanging slack. The horses complain about the force, rearing up and speeding off faster than any of them are ready for, Ben grabbing on to the back of Richie’s shirt to keep him from tumbling out of the wagon.

The only thing they hear – the only thing _to be heard_ – as they speed away from the church as fast as Apple and Carrot can carry them away, is the blood-curling, rageful screech of the Beast in the still night air.

The house stands tall like a snuffed candle in the middle of the woods, darkened smoke rising from the chimney. The horses park themselves at a crooked angle against the fence that leaves everyone in the wagon leaning slightly crooked. Apple is chanting a frantic _AppleAppleApple,_ and Carrot resigns himself to distressed neighing. Stan, barely thinking, tosses the whole bag of snacks at them.

This is, of course, before everyone exits the wagon in unison, the hive mind kicking in. Their feet pound against the gravel path and Stan’s vision swims before him, and he feels as if he may pass out.

Bill holds his elbow and keeps him upright. 

Up ahead, Eddie leads the traumatised gallop to the front door until he is not.

And. Well.

Out of all the things they have seen tonight, if he were to rank them, Eddie disappearing right before their very eyes would probably take the number one slot. However, he does not entirely disappear as a small scattering of golden sparks floating in mid-air takes his place. This is right before a very small, very fast shape darts towards the house like a bullet and flies in through one of the windows would.

“Did you guys just _see that?_ _”_ Ben quips and, oh, he _sounds_ green.

“Did that,” Stan begins, “Look like a bird to you?”

Richie halts in his tracks, slamming right into Stan and Bill at the sight of Eddie’s disappearing act, says, “Excuse me one moment,” and promptly bends over to empty his stomach in one of the overgrown elder bushes lining the path.

Panic spikes in Stan’s throat, and he leans down to hold Richie by the shoulders, who throws an arm out and waves it towards the house, urging them on. Bev falls to her knees by his side and pats his back lightly.

“Go on,” she says, “I got him. Look.”

They look. A light has come on through the second-story window, which then travels down to the round porthole window. It disappears for a moment to reappear on the ground floor by the front door that swings open seconds later. Mike and Eddie stand in the threshold; Mike dressed for bed with a long blue coat that drags to the floor hastily thrown over his shoulders, and Eddie looking like Eddie again.

“Who’s that?” Ben asks.

“That’s Mike,” Richie answers, face still in the bush, groaning a little through his words. Bev shushes him and rubs between his shoulders.

“Come on,” Bill tells him quietly, tugging Stan towards the door where Mike is waving at them to come inside. He allows himself to be pulled along just as Ben slings Richie’s arm around his shoulders and helps him to his feet. “He’s okay.”

“I’m okay,” Richie agrees, head bowed low and dragging his feet a little. Despite the height ratio, Ben half-carries him down the path like he weighs nothing. “I’m – fuck.”

“Do you need to throw up again?” Stan hears Bev ask behind them, and Richie’s confirming groan.

Eddie is shivering a little way into the foyer under a colourful woven blanket similar to the ones Mike holds in his arms when they enter.

“Stan! You look awful,” Mike says, shoving a blanket at his chest. “And you’re bleeding.”

Stan blinks, minutely, and looks down at his arm. He _is_ bleeding – a gash the vague size of a pencil cuts down his forearm, blood dripping to his fingertips. Stan stares at it like some kind of foreign insect is crawling there instead. He hadn’t even noticed himself get hurt. He looks up at Bill and notices, similarly, there is a slice above his eyebrow. Blood drips down his temple and over his cheekbone.

Eddie makes a throaty noise and reaches for his pouch, ruffling in there for a moment and frowning.

“Do you have any bandages?”

“Kitchen,” Mike says.

Eddie nods, and doesn’t wait for anyone to follow. There is a blur of movement and a flash of light, and then he is gone again, and the sound of rapidly beating wings fades away down the darkened hallway. 

“Oh,” Mike says, talking to Bill now, who is otherwise preoccupied with staring wide-eyed where Eddie vanished, yet again. “I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Mike. Eddie’s, uh,” Mike, too, blinks down the hallway, “Eddie’s friend.”

It takes a moment, the struggle and frustration written imperatively over Bill’s tired face, but he eventually gasps out a soft, “I’m Bill.”

“What,” Stan asks, “is Eddie?”

Mike looks like he doesn’t completely understand the question. “He’s Eddie?” 

When the others struggle through the door with Richie, Mike leads the way through the house into what appears to be his kitchen; _appears_ , as everything that should not be in a kitchen is in this kitchen. If it weren’t for the stovetop and faucets, there is no actual way, especially in the dead of night, to tell that this room would ever be used for cooking, either in present or past tense. Things litter every surface of the room, from the countertops to the floor. All except for the table in the centre, ironically, that only hosts a lacy cloth and an Eddie, who perches on the edge of it with his feet dangling off, working at cutting up some bandages.

There’s a very good chance that all that was previously living on the table, bare seconds prior to their arrival, has been added to the collection on the floors and countertops. A _very_ good chance.

The room is how Stan imagines a garden gnome would decorate their house, or some kind of troll or dwarf, and reminds him a little of Richie’s bedroom back home. Regardless of it all, Mike says, “I’ll boil some water,” and picks out a steal teapot that had was perfectly concealed under a panting of a house in a meadow and a book about ducks.

Ben deposits Richie at the table. Bill does the same with Stan, and it is only when he is sitting down that he realises truly how faint he feels, the room undulating slightly in the corners of his eyes. Stan places his face in his hands, and Richie collapses straight into the cherry oak. 

Everyone takes a seat around the table, and for a moment there is only Mike preparing tea and Eddie tearing bandages. Stan notices he has come to sit beside him only when he feels the softest of touches against his elbow, and it is enough to make him jerk. Eddie pulls his hand away at lightning speed, and Stan sees he is holding a bundle of cotton and bandages in one hand, the other he holds to his chest.

After a minute of deep contemplation, Stan slides his arm towards Eddie.

“It all makes sense now,” Stan mutters, watching Eddie dab a strange earthy mixture onto the deep cut.

“What makes sense?” Eddie asks.

“How you kept sneaking up on me.”

“And me. Fuck,” Richie groans into the table.

Ben hums in agreement. Bev raises two fingers, head bent over her newly poured, generous sized cup of tea like she’s trying to steam herself unconscious, curls springing at her ears.

“How many times were you there but,” Ben asks, “not there?”

“You say that like I’ve been spying on you all,” Eddie says, frowning. He keeps his gaze focused tight on Stan’s arm and does not look up at any of them. Stan remembers various things at once; the little blue bird sitting on the window in the kitchen, on the fence beside Apple and Carrot, the quick beating of small wings flying past his head.

“Have you?”

“No,” Eddie says, “of course not.”

The man in Rosewood, the look of equally measured rage and terror on his face, and the cruel bend of his voice when he said, _Yo_ _u_ _are_ _not welcome here._

Richie’s voice, table echoed, cuts in, “Spying? On you? Please. I’ve picked mushrooms out of the garden that are more interesting.”

Mike places cups and saucers on the table beside Richie’s head, slightly heavier than necessary. It blocks out the _asshole_ muttered from Bev’s end of the table. Richie does not even flinch.

When Stan looks back over to Eddie, his head is ducked, dabbing cotton on the wound with a tiny smile tugging at the corner of his lips. 

Everyone is mostly quiet for a while. Mike leaves for a few minutes and returns with even more blankets that he passes around the table, and Stan is quite sure Bill has fallen asleep beside him.

Eventually, Ben asks, “Would it be weird if I told you guys I wrote a paper about you in nineth grade?”

Richie makes a sort of noise into the table that is a marriage between a sob and a hysterical giggle. Stan just says, “Yes, Ben.”

When Stan’s arm is wrapped, Bill’s cut is attended to, and the others are checked – a small scattering of bruises cover both Ben and Bev, and Richie is sporting a nicely forming shiver on his right cheekbone – Mike turns the gas up on the lamp to brighten the room, and says, “Tell me everything.”


	3. Act 3.

Seven steaming cups of jasmine tea have long since grown cold by the time Mike leans back in his chair with his eyes closed, after the story has ended, and contemplates what he is going to say next.

Richie shuts his eyes and watches on loop, like a broken film reel, the doors of the church house bursting open and that great big Thing looming over Stan and Bill with ravenous intent. His cheek hurts; stings when Richie touches it, _stung_ when Eddie reached over and pressed a dish towel full of ice gently to his skin, hissing when it had barely just kissed his cheek. There is a vague memory in his mind of something hitting him, but try as he might, the blurry memory refuses to sharpen.

Finally, after a long-drawn silence, Mike opens his eyes and says, “You used a sun root to distract him.”

Eddie, gnawing at a bit of skin on the corner of his lip, starts and jumps to attention. “Yes, I did.”

“And you knew that would work?”

“Uh. Well. No, not exactly. But I had a hunch.”

Everyone stares.

“It was a good hunch.”

Ben swears quietly under his breath and presses his face into his palms.

Some time prior, in the middle of the recount when they reached the point of Eddie pulling out the sun root, he stopped to catch them up on his father who is, supposedly, the only person ever to leave the Unknown. The other four, minus Mike of course and Richie himself, sat quietly for a few heartbeats processing this.

“It was a really good hunch,” Bill says, his elbow balanced on the arm of the chair, his fingers pushing at invisible keys on the table. “It worked. It saved us. Thank you.”

Eddie flushes under the sudden praise, ducking his head so his curls obscure the new tint of his cheeks. A spike of annoyance tickles the palms of Richie’s hands.

“I have a question,” he says to Mike. “Actually, I have a couple of questions, but the rest we’ll leave for another time.” He leans forward, arms crossed on the table. “When me and Stan were here last, you said that the only way for us leave this place is to meet the Beast once and live to tell the tale. Well, here we are. We saw the ugly fucker with our own bare peepers, so that means we win, right? The exit gates opened up for us.”

Bev sits up. “Wait, seriously?”

Mike presses his lips. In a kind voice, he says, “I think we should talk more about this in the morning. You all look like you can use some sleep.” 

Unable to imagine that any of them would be willing to sit there for any longer and discuss the many near-death experiences they all stumbled blindly through tonight, the table nods in unanimous agreement. Chair legs scrape against the tile and pierce like razors in Richie’s ears as they all begin to slowly file out of the room, waiting in the doorway for Mike to show them to their rooms. Richie and Stan make it one inch off their seats before both curse.

They say, “Shit. The horses,” at the same time.

“They’re probably terrified.”

“And hungry.”

“I’ll go get them.”

“There’s a stable out back,” Mike adds, “they can sleep in there. It’s warm, and plenty of hay for them to eat and water to drink.”

Stan asks, “You have horses, too?”

Mike pulls an uncomfortable mask over his face before answering, “No.”

Richie coughs into his fist. “I’ll um. You go, I’ll bring them round back.”

Stan rolls his eyes. The act of doing so makes him grab the edge of the table, wavering on his feet, hair falling over his forehead like a veil. Still, he tries it: “No, I’ll help you.”

“Stan, for fuck –” Richie sighs, pushing his glasses up on top of his head to rub at his throbbing temples. At this point, he’ll be lucky to wake up in the morning with anything less than a migraine. “You’re arm’s torn open, okay? You look like you took a bath in bleach. I’ve seen fuckin’ Halloween sheet-ghosts less white than you are right now. Go to sleep. I’ll handle Apple and Carrot.”

Stan squares his shoulders. The shirt over his right shoulder is ripped, blood coating the frayed edges. “But –”

“Billy,” Richie calls out. Bill, previously leaning against the door frame looking like he’d fallen asleep on his feet, snaps his head up. “Lock him in a room for me, will ya?”

When Bill comes over and tries to, like a perfect gentleman, slide an arm around Stan’s shoulders for support he jerks back, insisting, “I can walk for myself,” and does the most impressively stubborn wobble out of a room that Richie has ever seen. 

Eddie follows him out to collect horses. Upon approach, the two begin to fret, shaking their heads and stomping the ground. Richie shushes them, stroking their nose and necks and mumbling rubbish to them until the anxious _AppleCarrotAppleCarrot_ subsides. Eddie strolls around to the side of the wagon and begins to untie the reigns.

“Shouldn’t we, uh,” Richie begins, his voice in his throat, “fix the wagon first? Park it somewhere better?”

“No, it’s fine,” Eddie says, winding Carrot’s reign around his wrist. Clicking his tongue twice, the horse begins to follow. “The stables are this way.”

Richie watches them walk down the path, Carrot following behind in a confident trot, not once glancing back. Eddie’s sleeves are rolled up past his elbows, and at once Richie’s mind flashes back to hours earlier, to the look on the man’s face after he saw mark on Eddie’s forearm, and the cruel snarl in his voice when he said _Devil_. 

Apple snorts loudly in Richie’s ear, ruffling his hair. He groans, wiping drops of horse spittle off his cheek. “Alright, alright. Come on.”

-

The candlelight casts shadows like hand puppets on the hallway walls, and Stan feels his heart stop and start again every time he turns a corner and catches sight of his own shadow, distorted and warped under the candlelight.

Stan can’t sleep.

When he closes his eyes, he sees the twisted toothy smile of the Beast waiting for him, patiently lurking until the moment he falls asleep to pounce. Three times he has woken up with a start after Mike assigned them all rooms to sleep in, and three times it has been with tears clinging to the corners of his eyes, and his clothing drenched in sweat and stuck to him like a new layer skin. The candle left on the small table by his bedside did nothing to quell the fears and anxieties that crept in the shadows in the corners of the room and up in the cornices high above his head.

This is why Stan’s addled mind thought a walk in the middle of an empty mansion in the dead of night sounded like a good idea at the time. Now, walking the halls, his bare feet padding on the old carpet, Stan realises the monsters in the shadows are not extinguished in the open space but have more room to get him, now.

“Bad idea,” Stan chants to himself, pulling the robe tighter around him. He would be standing, if his memory is correct, approximately halfway between the room he is staying in and the kitchen. He could turn back now, or he could carry on to the kitchen, make some tea (maybe Mike won’t mind him scavenging through his cupboards at three in the morning) and head back. Or perhaps he could check on Apple and Carrot. Richie said they looked happy enough in the stables, and that Apple was even chewing on some hay when he’d left, completely forgetting he was there. Still, Stan would like to see them for himself.

Maybe he’ll even bring the tea in with him and sleep beside the horses on a bed of hay. The options are endless. 

“Kitchen,” Stan whispers. He’ll go to the kitchen. That is if he doesn’t get lost along the way. “Mike said the house is secure. It’s fine. It’s safe. You trust Mike.”

His mother always used to say talking to yourself was the first sign of insanity, directed at his father who would mutter to himself in his study.

Pushing the thought away before it could bring anything unpleasant to the surface, Stan hurries on as fast as he can.

Only making one wrong turn once and ending up in the library instead of the kitchen, Stan finally arrives with most of his wits intact –

To find Bill sitting at the table with his knees to his chest, lamp close by and reading a book, chin in his fist. He looks more like he is asleep than awake, the light balancing carefully on his auburn locks, elongating the shadows cast by his eyelashes so that his eyes look neither open nor closed. For a moment, Stan considers abandoning the mission and running out to the horses with no tea, but then he shifts his weight in the wrong place, and the floorboard beneath his foot complains, and Bill looks up.

Stan straightens up, crossing his arms over his chest, and says, “Hi,” in a way that catches in his throat and escapes somewhat like a small cough. 

“Hey,” Bill says, voice so soft Stan almost doesn’t hear it. “Yuh-you okay?”

 _That_ _’_ _s a loaded question,_ Stan thinks. “Of course,” he says, “Perfectly. You?”

Out of the two of them, Bill is at least truthful. With a half-smile that doesn’t reach his eyes, lidded in the candlelight, Bill stammers, “Noh-not really. Can’t sleep.”

Stan sighs. He walks over to the table and sits down beside Bill, admitting, “Yeah. Me too.”

“I k-kee-keep seeing huh-him,” Bill says, “It. Whatever. I fuh-feel like I-It’s way-waiting for muh-me. Like it’s hiding. Waiting.”

Stan closes his eyes and breathes out. He feels guilty for lying. “Me too, Bill.”

“You were in there for longer with it,” Bill says.

“I was,” Stan agrees, “Would have been even longer if you hadn’t crawled in through that hole.”

Bill’s irises have turned a warm amber under the dim light, like an ocean at sunset, and suddenly Stan needs to be standing up.

“I’m going to make some tea,” he says, “Want some?”

Stan thinks he hears a faint linger of a smile in Bill’s voice when he says, “Yes, please.”

As the water boils over the stove, Stan reflects: it isn’t right to be ogling Bill the way he is, and it certainly isn’t fair on Bill to be ogled without his consent. It’s wrong to do so, especially the way Stan is doing it: when he helps Richie bring pales of water down the hill, sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Or in the early hours of the morning, when Stan has woken up before him, and Bill is asleep on his side on the floor wearing one of Stan’s nightshirts. The fabric has pulled taught over his shoulder, and his lips are slightly parted, his hair falling over his eyebrows in a way that makes him look shy and innocent, somewhat like it is now. 

Anxiously, Stan wonders if Bill has noticed. Perhaps he’s polite in not saying anything about it. Occasionally he would catch Richie’s eye across the room, and his friend would be giving him this knowing look that turns Stan’s insides out and makes him feel like he needs to duck his head and hide. 

Stan should be grateful that Bill is enough of a gentleman to spare him this inevitable mortifying ordeal. Time may have passed in the outside world, but Stan doesn’t doubt the way in which the world – the way in which _Derry_ – views boys and girls who like other boys and girls, respectfully, would have changed all that much even in 27 years. 

Besides, it’s not like anything could ever happen between them, anyway. Stan may be a victim of the occasional delusion like the best of them, but he is not an idiot. The gate has opened up for them, and in a few days, with Mike’s help, they would have figured out a way to get passed the Beast and leave the Unknown, and Stan will be –

The kettle begins to cry, and Stan jumps out of his skin, nearly pouring boiling water over himself to take it off. Eddie would have his head.

Stan pours their tea. When he turns back to the table with their piping hot mugs, he finds Bill watching him; chin rested atop one of his knees and hair obscuring one eye. The gaze makes him feel exposed and sends pin needles up and spine.

Stan places the tea on the table and sits down. Bill is still watching him.

“What is it?”

Slowly, Bill says, “I keep thinking about the church. About the things It s-seh-said.”

“Try not –” Stan begins but does not get to finish when Bill interrupts with a terrible statement, that being, “My brother died when he was six.”

The words stun him into silence, and Stan can only sit there in shock, tendrils of steam rising from the tea and curling their hair, as Bill continues, “He liked b-b-boats. He liked them a lot. I used to muh-make them for him out of p-paper, and used wax to help it float. One day it wah-was puh-p-pouring rain, like, the worst storm you’ve ever seen. It rained f-for three days straight, and buh-by the third day Geh-Georgie –” Bill pauses. It’s like saying the name out loud physically takes the breath from his lungs. 

“He was so restless,” he continues, “he couldn’t sit s-s-still anymore. He wanted to go out and play. But I was sick, so I – I cuh-couldn’t go out with him. Muh-mom made him p-promise not to guh-go further than our neighb-buh-ours house, but of course he didn’t listen. The boat I’d m-made him must’ve gotten caught in a stream and puh-pulled down the whole street. By the time we realised he was missing it was –” 

With a strangled groan Bill cuts himself off, hands reaching up to cover his face.

"So. Tha-that's what It meant when It s-said it was my fault. Because it was."

"No, Bill, that's not true," Stan says. 

Bill is shaking his head, "I wasn't that sick, I c-could have just gone out with him, or sat on the porch, or -"

Stan reaches across the table and places his hand over Bill’s. "Stop,” he says, “You couldn't have known." 

Bill drops his forehead to his knees and lets out a helpless whimper. 

Stan continues, "It was an accident. A horrible accident that was in no way, shape or form –” he gives Bill’s hand a light squeeze, “your fault. No one blames you."

Bill snorts miserably. "I blame me. My p-parents blame me, too. I can tell. They've never been the same around me after that day. Mom looks at me like she’s waiting for something, and my dad …" 

"Bill …" 

"I can't - I can't go b-back into that room. I'll just - I'll just sss-stay in here tonight, or -"

"No, you won't," Stan says, and with some wave of courage that washes over him from the ether, he stands, taking Bill’s hand with him. When he doesn't immediately look up, Stan tugs on it lightly until he gets the hint. "Come with me." 

It's too cold outside to sleep in the stables, he decides, and they are not horses. Bill allows Stan to lead him out of the kitchen, up the stairs and down the hall (the correct one) until they end up in front of Stan’s room. A feeling of nervousness fills his belly when the door clicks shut behind them, but he shoves it quickly away. 

Stan says, "You'll stay in here tonight. We'll keep watch for each other." 

Bill stares. He stares and Stab sweats under his nightclothes, and wishes for a moment to rewrite time and just walk into the fucking stables, hay lodged in places they really shouldn't be when he wakes in the morning be damned. 

“Suh-sleeping in shifts?”

Stan shrugs, “If you want.”

Then, Bill's lips stretch into a playful smile, and he says, "I sleep like the dead." 

Stan shrugs, relief forming in a bead of sweat on his forehead, and says, "Then I'll just keep watch.” 

"You sleep like the dead, too."

Stan refuses, with every ounce of fiber in his being, to flush. "How would you know that?" 

"You snore," Bill says, "like a buh-bear. I've kicked you a couple times to try and wake you up but no dice." 

"I do not!" Stan gawks, affronted, "You have not." 

"Have too," Bill says, falling back on the love seat pushed against the wall. 

"Yeah, well, you talk in your sleep." 

"What have I said?" 

Stan shrugs, "Nothing much. Mostly nonsense babbling. Nursery rhymes. This and that."

Bill rolls his eyes. “Uh-huh.”

“Really, though, you can, um,” Stan mutters, playing with the hem of the nightshirt. It’s Mike’s, of course, and hangs a bit too long in the arms and legs. Bill’s as well – the pants swallow his feet up like vacuums. “You can sleep in here. I grabbed this book from Mike’s library earlier, and I think I’ll just sit up and read it.”

“What’s it a-about?” Bill asks, sounding interested.

Stan wanders over to the foot of the bed and picks up the book. It is old and worn, covering a lovely rust brown with gold letters engraved in delicate script, and a picture of a lake in the centre. He hands the book to Bill.

“It’s called _Hereafter_. From what I gather, it’s about a family that lives forever. They get powers from the water in the lake.”

“Fountain of youth,” Bill mutters, turning the book over to read the back. His fingers trace gently over the covers, the pads of his fingers running over the dips, curves, and rips in the paper. Stan hums in agreement, leaning back against the bedpost.

When briefly searching the library after his wrong turn, Stan noticed a few books where the theme was immortality. Mike himself admitted he didn’t quite know how he himself was himself, and how he even came to be. Collecting books and artifacts and pieces of parchment that remind him of himself is perhaps his way of trying to figure it all out, or at least find a semblance of comfort in them. Maybe this book, a simple 300-page hard back that looks as old as Stan’s great-grandfather, is a comfort to Mike. A _you are not alone_. He wonders how many times Mike has read it. 

Bill hands the book back to Stan, and asks, “D-do yuh-you thing you c-can …?”

“Can what?” Stan asks, when Bill doesn’t finish.

“Read it. Ah-out loud?”

“Oh.” Stan blinks. “Oh, yeah, of course.”

They settle on the bed, their backs against the plump pillows that rest against the warm oak bed head. Stan holds the book open on his crossed legs and is careful to be mindful of the space between them; Bill curls with one knee to his chest and the other leg spread out, lounging back against the fluffy white cotton frills.

Somewhere through chapter four, Bill begins to nod off.

“She did not allow herself to consider the idea that making a difference in the world might require a bolder venture,” Stan reads, “She merely told herself consolingly, ‘Of course, while I’m in the wood, if I decide never to come back, well then, that will be that.’”

He feels a small dip in the mattress, then, and when he looks over, Bill is slipping against the soft cotton sheets until his temple rests against Stan’s shoulder. When he looks down, Bill is fast asleep, tired eyes finally fallen shut. His lips have parted a sliver, chapped, and rosy pink in the areas where he’s been picking at the dry skin. There is a small dusting of freckles across the bridge of his nose and some on his cheeks leftover from summer, and Stan sighs as quietly as he can.

The book is put away and the bedsheets are pulled off. Somehow, he manages this without waking Bill. _Sleep like the dead_ , he thinks, smiling to himself. Stan tucks into bed with a light feeling in his chest, watching Bill’s rise and fall on the sheets beside him. He sleeps on his back like he does at the cottage, one arm thrown over his head and the other resting comfortably against his hip.

Stan allows himself another moment just to look, then he says, “Goodnight, Bill.”

The candles stay on through the night.

-

A large creeping vine has engulfed most of the greenhouse's far wall, and it looks like it eats people in the summer. It also looks very dead – the spindly tendrils wrapped around the columns that travel all the way up to the high domed ceiling are brown, the thorns just the same. It looks as if it may have sprouted flowers once, and may have been nice to look at, but now just serves as an obnoxiously large sun shade, and privacy screen.

Not that there is anyone around to need privacy. Richie is sure beyond the green house's glass walls, and beyond the garden adorned with sculptures – some of which span from the strange, the boring, and to the just plain ugly – there is nothing but trees.

And some gravestones. He forgot about those.

Richie sighs and drums the end of the pen against the page of his journal.

He is extremely bored. The kind of mind-numbingly bored that makes him want to rip his hair out. Usually, to handle this kind of boredom, Richie would do something loud and obnoxious just for the sake of making Stan yell at him. Not that he likes Stan yelling at him, but arguing is something to do, at least. There are days where Stan will bite, and there are others where he will simply roll his eyes and leave the room with his hands up in surrender.

There is no Stan this morning, not anywhere in the mansion. He’s even checked the stables (actually, they were the first place he’d looked), and if Stan is neither there nor the kitchen, or library, then Richie is lost. Maybe he is still asleep. That would be nice.

Richie pushes his glasses up to his forehead and rubs his tired eyes. No sleep again last night, not that he held any in expectations for himself to be able to in the first place. He missed his room in the cottage. At least in there he had a ton of shit to entertain himself with, enough to get him through the night without having to go searching through the big, dark mansion. No, thank you very much. So, he paced, listening to the wind lightly nudge a tree branch against the window in his room. When that didn’t work, he tried staring at the ceiling until his eyes began to create images in the dim lighting that wasn’t there. 

Afterwards he took a shower, which helped somewhat make him feel like he no longer had spiders crawling beneath his skin, but didn’t do much in terms of making him drowsy. Pushing a hand beneath the waistband of his pants had been a last-ditch effort, and somewhere around three to four in the morning Richie buried his face in the pillow and resigned himself to the inevitable.

Now, Richie scribbles jokes and verses into his journal that he only half feels. That is until Mike walks in, his shoes clicking against the tile, holding a spray bottle in his hand.

“Oh. Morning,” he says, an awkward twist to his voice.

Richie nods at him from across the room, lounging further into the love seat. It is a clawfoot, the legs resembling bird talons. Mike says, “Hope you slept well?” and Richie can only snort, returning to his journal. 

Mike begins to water the plants. He makes a leisured round of the room, stopping at the foot of the death plant that, Richie notices, stems from a pot.

“What is that thing?” he asks.

Mike shrugs. “Crawling ivy,” he says, and leaves it at that.

Richie looks at him. His face is drawn, eyes holding that familiar weariness Richie recognises in himself after a long night with no sleep. He says as much.

Mike holds a fern leaf between his fingers and says, “I was up all night reading. There are hundreds of books in this house, but none can seem to give me a straight answer. There was one, however, that talked about an object that could be used to trap the Beast. If we were to find it,” he sighs, “and find out _what_ it is, then we might just have a chance of defeating this thing. I just have to do more research.”

Richie nods minutely to himself, turning Mike’s words over in his mind until he’s forgotten he is even there until he hears, “You hate me for not telling you the full truth.”

Richie blinks. “I don’t hate you,” he says, shocked.

“But you’re angry with me.”

“I’m not. I’m angry with –” he waves a hand, indicating the world around them.

Mike nods and takes a seat on a wicker stool beside a fern taller than the both of them combined. Maybe if they were to add Eddie at the top they would reach.

“I know what its like to feel trapped. That’s how I felt when I first came here, but then after a while it just became … familiar. It became home.”

“This place isn’t home,” Richie says, “and I’m sure as fuck not staying here for another three years. _Twenty-seven_ years. We’re getting past that clown and getting the fuck out of here before the gate can close again.” 

Mike doesn’t look hurt by his words, or even angry at them. His eyes are soft but unreadable, and his smile holds an impression of sadness. “I just mean I understand how you feel. And I guess, in a way, I envy you. You have your friends, and you have a way out. Me?” he says, tone changing like the wind when he looks up at the domed ceiling and raises his voice, “I have an eavesdropping bird!”

There is a flinch of a shadow, and a fluttering after the shadow, and suddenly Eddie is there, descended from the ceiling to land perfectly on the glass coffee table, emerging in a flash of wind and light. Richie cries out and hugs his journal to his hammering chest.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping!” Eddie insists, smoothing down his shirt and hair left ruffled from the transformation.

“Sure,” Mike says. “Get off my table.”

Eddie gets off the table. He takes a seat beside Richie, who has to move his legs to make room for him.

Mike looks between them, says, “I should check if the others are awake yet,” and leaves the room, the spray bottle left behind on the wicker stool.

“How do you do that? Richie asks, after his heartbeat has settled back into a normal rhythm. “Were you – were you born like this, or did you get cursed by some witch or something?”

“Witches don’t exist,” Eddie says, obviously. “And yes, I was born like this. No, I don’t really know how I do it. I just do. I’ve never met any others like me, besides my mother.”

His voice grows soft at the end of the sentence, his eyes gaining a bleary, far away look. Richie’s mind flashes back to that day Eddie found him on the hillside when they learnt of the time paradox. His story about his father and the postcard he sent from Derry. The nickname _bluebird_ clings to his mind, drawn out by Eddie’s fathers’ neat script.

Hesitantly, feeling a little like he shouldn’t be, asks, “When me and Stan found you in the woods, Eddie, you were running. Was it from something, or someone?”

 _One will be a warning, the other an ally,_ Mike had said _. The bird and the toad._ Everything is beginning to piece together.

It takes Eddie a minute to answer, during which Richie waits on bated breath and loses hope in Eddie answering the question at all, until finally; “Both. It was. It was my mother. She, um. She gets a bit odd, sometimes. Mostly when I try and leave the house, which I don’t do often, but – It was always a little like this, but after my dad left it got … worse.” He closes his eyes. “She’d tell me how people in town would hurt me, or newcomers who crossed the Wall were bad, and we couldn’t trust anyone but each other. It got to the point where I couldn’t even visit the stream outside our house without her supervision.”

“What happened?”

“She thought – thinks – if I left, I’d get myself into some kind of trouble and I’ll get … stuck.” Eddie chews his lip. Like the next thing to come out of his mouth is the scariest thing ever. “That I’ll be stuck like this. Well, you see, our kind, we – I mean – my kind, we can’t change if we’re hurt. Not until we fully heal.”

“That bottle you made me throw away,” Richie begins and watches as Eddie visibly flinches. He says, “You said it was medicine,” and thinks back to the days following them finding Eddie in the woods and the way that he talked and talked without taking a single breath, with that blown eyed, red-cheeked look.

“It was. My mother has made me take it since I was a baby. She said it would keep me strong, but I noticed it was getting harder to shift. Harder to do anything, really. I stopped taking it, and she noticed.”

Eddie stops to take a breath.

Richie has a moment of realisation during this short recess; Eddie throwing up in the bathroom, Eddie ashen and green, disappearing in the garden and returning with a sheen of sweat over his brow. Eddie shivering but determined to face Rosewood with his shoulders back and chin up. He had been going through withdrawal from whatever _medicine_ was in that vial.

“She noticed that I wasn’t taking it. As much, I mean.” Eddie frowns. “It was hard not to take the medicine for long before I … well. I guess she made sure I wouldn’t have been able to stop drinking it for too long. That’s around when I decided to leave. I planned it all, but she ended up finding out and tried to stop me.”

“And then you ran, and ended up at the pond,” Richie finishes for him.

A grin finds its way to Eddie’s lips but not quite his eyes. “At the edge of the woods, next to an apple and a yelling horse.”

“And a handsome devil,” Richie grins, “don’t forget that part.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Okay.” 

“You put the wheel back on the wagon,” Richie says, “I remember that. You can do other things, too, can’t you?”

At this Eddie flushes. He says, “Sometimes.”

“That’s amazing.”

Eddie shrugs, smiling at the ground. “You know, Richie,” he says, “if you hadn’t been there when you were, I think she would have gotten me.”

Oh.

Eddie’s eyes widen. “You and Stan, I mean!”

Richie laughs but it comes out a little too high. “Yeah, yeah, of course.”

“Do you, uh. Do you want to see?”

Richie blinks. “See what?”

Eddie wiggles his fingers, sparks of golden light dancing in the air.

“ _Oh_ ,” Richie says, “I mean – yeah – don’t – if you don’t – that would be pretty boss, I –”

Eddie shifts before Richie can babble himself to an early grave. In a flurry of movement, the same he saw the night before, Eddie is now a bird. He is the size of Richie’s palm if not smaller, and blue all over except for a dusting of orange feathers on his chest, like someone has gently brushed paint over the feathers. Richie wonders how many times he witnessed Eddie shift just out of the corner of his eye and dismissed it as a change in the wind, or a flash of sunlight,

Eddie chirps once and does a little hop in a circle, spreading his wings out at the end as a _Ta da!_

 _“_ _Whoa,_ _”_ Richie breathes, shifting on his knees to lean in close. Eddie allows himself to be thoroughly looked over (he has a smaller orange spot under the right eye where human Eddie has a mole, and on his left wing there is a V shaped mark, like the mark human Eddie has on his forearm). “This is so neat.” 

Eddie chirps again and does a sort of shrug with his wings. _Yeah, I know._

Richie reaches out and pokes the end of his beak. Eddie’s eyes narrow in offence, black beady eyes staring daggers up at Richie. 

He is, by far, the most precious thing Richie has ever seen.

When he is transformed back and walks with Richie to check on the horses, Richie asks, “So do you all change into different birds?”

“No,” Eddie says, “It’s a different form for everyone. My mother can change into a bear.”

As it turns out, _I have to do more research_ in Mike Speak roughly translates to _I_ _’_ _m going to go off to do a little more reading for a couple of hours and then have everything figured out by lunch_.

They are sitting in the garden when Mike comes running out through the greenhouse with an awfully large book in his arms, depositing it open on the iron table hand enough for it to make a loud _thump_ _!_

Apple, she and Carrot are being walked around the garden by Stan, startles at the noise, and sends a snort of irritation Mike’s way.

“It’s a lantern!” Mike says, chest heaving and cheeks flushed, like he has just run all through the house. Everyone moseys over to the table to look down at the book. It’s old – Richie thinks about as old as the book he found that led them to Mike last week. Written on the pages are words in sepia calligraphy that Richie can’t read, but in the centre is a drawing of an old oil lamp.

“What are you talking about?” Bev asks.

“The object that I told you about, the one said to be able to trap the Beast. It’s this lantern, right here.” He points at the page. “It says here the lantern is the oldest artifact in the Unknown. When the first person to ever climb the Wall came here, this was what they found. This, and the Beast, of course.”

Mike flips the pages of the book until he lands on another that he bookmarked. “Right here it talks about how the artifact – the lantern – is the Beast’s greatest weakness. And they who keep the lantern control the Beast.”

“Light,” Bill murmurs, fingers tracing over the page, “Wh-when we were in the church, It didn’t like the candles we were huh-holding.”

“It was scared of the light,” Stan says. Carrot huffs over his shoulder, disturbing the soft curls at his temple.

“No,” Mike says, “It’s not scared of light. It’s drawn to it. Eddie, that’s why the stunt you pulled with the sun root worked. You were able to distract It, freeze It in Its own tracks.”

Eddie, hovering by Richie’s shoulder, stares down at the page with a far-away look in his eyes.

“That’s not the only thing,” Mike says.

“Please tell me you have this thing locked up in a museum somewhere,” Ben pleads.

“No,” Mike says, “But I have seen it before.” He turns to Richie and Stan; “Do you remember I told you about my friend? The one who wrote that book that lead you here, Richie?”

“Uh,” Richie croaks, “Yeah?”

“His name was Don Hagarty. He was like me, but he’d been here for a very long time before I arrived. He had this lantern,” Mike says, and Richie feels his blood turn cold. “He took it everywhere he went. It never left his sight. I thought it was odd and I teased him about it a lot, but I always knew there was something more to it than what he would tell me.”

“What happened to him?” Bev asks.

Mike frowns. “I’m not sure. One day he told me he had started to age again, that he could feel it happening slowly. He said it started after I arrived, and that I was here to take over from him.”

Mike blinks the ghosts away from his eyes and settles in a chair, breathing deeply. “Then one day he was gone and I never saw him again. He, nor the lantern. I’m afraid I have no idea what happened to it.”

“I do.”

Eddie.

“What?” Richie gasps, turning to see that Eddie’s face has taken on a cold, weary shroud. 

“I know where it is,” he says. Fingers claw into the sleeves at his elbows as he hugs himself tight around the middle. “I’ve seen it. It’s at home.”

“At home? At – at your _house?_ ”

Eddie nods, and slowly he says, “My mother has it.” 

-

A thin chill passes through him, those ones that are sharp enough to pierce your skin and turn your bones to ice for a brief moment. Stan shivers and hugs his knees tighter to his chest. 

Apple whinnies impatiently in his ear until Stan has enough and tosses her the whole bag. The horse gives him an appreciative, “Apple,” before sticking her face into the bunch. Stan sighs and drops his head onto his knees, and entertains the idea of being a horse. Life would be simpler, he imagines, and less stressful. The only thing you would have to worry about is snakes, maybe other things that take it upon themselves to reach up from the grass and attach to your leg. Maybe decisions would be simpler as a horse. Maybe he wouldn’t have this awful, sick feeling that ceases to leave in the pit of his stomach, that grows larger every day, as a horse.

The Wall stretches farther than his eyes can see around the land and beyond. A river cuts through the trees down below. The belltower of Pottsfield glimmers under the setting sun. Soon the bell will ring. Stan wonders if he will be able to hear it when it does. 

Apple whinnies just as the sound of horseshoes galloping against the dirt path draws Stan’s attention, and he turns quickly to find Bill approaching up the hill with Carrot. He is holding on too tightly and doesn’t appear to have strapped the saddle right, but nevertheless, he managed to make it up the hill all the same. Carrot parks himself beside Apple, sniffing her nose, and Bill slides off his back with a wobble in the knees.

“How did you find me?” Stan asks.

“I fuh-followed you,” Bill admits. He looks visibly spooked. “I’ve nun-never been on a horse b-be-fuh-fore.” 

“Clearly,” Stan says, hearing the irate clip of his voice and hating it.

Bill takes a seat beside him regardless, falling onto the dewy grass with a huff of relief, legs stretched out. For a while he says nothing, almost like he is allowing Stan to exist in his melodrama, staring out over the horizon at the gold-tipped trees and glimmering sunset.

There was an area of Derry that, from Stan’s memory, came close to this view once upon a time. The valley over the quarry; if you climbed high enough, you could make out the rolling hills and mountains that surrounded the small town. A smaller Stan and Richie had a game to see who could climb the highest. Once Richie beat Stan’s personal best by a whole seven feet, and while he was pissed, the image Richie described of the view from the top was worth it. When he closed his eyes he could imagine how the whole town seemed to get swallowed up by the great big world around them.

 _One day we_ _’_ _ll be gone from here,_ Stan had said to Richie in the summer of ’62, as they floated on their backs in the cool water, _One day we_ _’_ _ll see the world outside Derry._

Stan wonders if Bill has seen that view. He wonders if he is thinking of it now.

Sometimes, Stan has noticed, Bill won’t speak until his breath is even, and any trace of his stutter has been submerged. Sometimes he will look up at Stan approaching and smile a big toothy grin, and Stan would get that feeling in his chest where it feels as if his insides are turning to straw, and he could cough up wild violets.

Now, he says, “It really is so god damn beautiful here. I understand why you don’t want to leave.”

Stan’s insides turn to straw for different reasons.

Bill’s eyes hold no judgement when he looks at Stan and says, “That’s what the Beast meant, right, when It said you had a secret? One you can’t tell Richie?”

“I didn’t plan –” Stan begins, feeling the words tumble on his tongue, not really leaving it the way he intends, “It wasn’t always … I really did want to go, at the start, but –”

“But?”

Stan balls his fists, feeling that familiar tightening in his chest squeeze his lungs. “You’re from Derry,” he says, “do you really want to go back there?”

He stands. The wind has settled, and Stan feels it bouncing off his skin like ricochet bullets. He feels suddenly desperate. He feels as if a rose-coloured film that has sat over his eyes for so long has just shattered. He feels the world falling apart behind him.

He has kept this truth inside him for so long, wrapping it in lies and false hope for others that tarnish when they hit the sunlight, and turn bad like rotten fruit. He’d hoped that maybe if he kept at it, he would eventually begin to believe it, too, and maybe Richie wouldn’t see through the thin film and know what a liar he is. A line in the book he read to Bill last night caught him; _She was able to believe in this because she needed to; and, believing, was her own true, promising friend once more._

Stan places his hands over his face.

“My parents have thought I’ve been dead for twenty-seven years,” he says, voice but a whisper. He feels a thousand eyes watching him at this very moment – one pair of them, somehow, feel like Richie’s. “They’ve mourned me, they’ve put me to rest. What’s me showing up on their doorstep after three decades going to do? Especially looking exactly the same as when I left. It’s going to do nothing but cause more pain, Bill. That’s all it will do.”

“Stan,” Bill says, also standing up, “I understand.”

Stan laughs. “No, you don’t. You don’t, Bill. You haven’t been here for as long as I have. You’ll go back home and nothing will change! Nothing will be different! I don’t even know what the world is like out there anymore!”

“So, you’re scared,” Bill says, and this time it isn’t a question.

The tightness in his chest squeezes and squeezes him until it finally snaps, and thick, hot tears spill from Stan’s eyes. It leaves him gasping for breath and clawing at the skin at his elbows, and the world has gone so blurry he can’t even see the horrified expression that is surely painted over Bill’s face. Stan wonders how long he’s been holding this in, how long this coil has been winding up in his chest, waiting for him to snap. It is both a relief, and terror.

“The idea of going ba –” A breath. “In Derry I felt suffocated. I never understood why or what it was that was doing that to me, but here I – I feel like I can finally breathe, Bill.”

Arms come up and embrace him. Bill holds him tight, and in the shock, Stan feels all the air he’d been holding in his lungs exhale. He sags against him, chin on his shoulder, cheek pressed against soft auburn hair. Stan’s arms lock around Bill’s waist, and Bill’s hand rubs a soothing circle between Stan’s shoulders.

Quietly, he repeats, “I understand.” 

Then, possessed by some invisible force, Stan kisses him.

He must admit that Bill’s lips aren’t as soft as he imagined they would be, but still, the press of them against Stan’s own is so lovely and distinctly _boy_ that his heart does leaps and tricks behind his ribcage regardless. The sharp intake of breath that he hears catching in Bill’s throat is like a slap on the cheek, and it wakes Stan from his stupor.

“Fuck, I’m so sorry,” he says immediately after breaking away, “I’m sorry, Bill, I shouldn’t have done that, I –”

Bill stutters out a breath that sounds somewhat like Stan’s name, blinking dazedly in empty space before him.

“Shit. _Fuck_. I can’t believe I did that. I’ll go. I’m sorry, I –”

Then Bill’s hands are cupping both sides of his face, and he is surging forward to connect their mouths once more.

The sun sets behind them.

-

Once they all got over the shock of _What the flying fucking monkey do you mean your mother has the oldest most valuable artifact in the entire Unknown?_ out of their system, the rest of the afternoon flowed surprisingly smooth. 

The realisation of the Beast being drawn to light and weakened by it, therefore, It will naturally do everything in Its power to snuff all light around them, caused a bit of a stir. While Ben is complaining about how he regrets not taking his trusty torch with him to the Halloween party, and Bev practices lighting matches one after another, Eddie takes Richie on a tour of the mansion.

He doesn’t understand why until they find themselves in the library.

“The Beast,” Eddie begins, “Pennywise, as he calls himself, will want to keep everything dark. It’s clever, too, so that won’t be too hard to accomplish.”

Richie watches as Eddie walks over to the far wall and draws the curtains, tugging on them extra hard until not even a sliver of sunlight remains. With the door shut behind them, the only light in the room emulates from a small candle sitting on the coffee table.

“Right, so don’t fuck around and stay in the light. Got it.”

Eddie makes a face. “It’ll be a little harder than that. Like I said, the Beast is crafty. Lantern or no lantern, you’ll need to be able to handle yourself in the dark.”

The flame dances wildly as it is lifted right before Eddie snuffs it out, leaving them in darkness.

“Uh. Is this a bad time to tell you I’m afraid of the dark?” Richie says, blinking against the black. The room is so dark that he can’t even make out the outline of Eddie’s figure anymore. “Papa?”

“Shush,” Eddie says, making Richie jump. His voice came from right behind him. “Use your instincts and feel around in the darkness.”

“This isn’t all just one elaborate scheme for you to cop a feel, huh, Eds?”

“Quiet,” Eddie snaps, just as something long and hard whacks Richie on the calf, and he yelps. “Do _not_ call me that.”

“I think it’s cute,” Richie says, frowning in the darkness and rubbing his leg. “You prefer Spaghetti, don’t you? Or Sunshine?”

An indignant squawk comes from the left. “Focus. Where am I?”

Richie moves to the left. Lightning fast, his arm juts out and fingers grip around fabric; smooth cotton, Eddie's sleeve. “There!” 

Eddie’s voice comes from behind, “Are you sure about that?” 

“What – how?” Richie draws the sleeve closer to him. It is feather-light. Just a coat on a rack Eddie has placed in front of him. “Fuck.”

Eddie laughs at him from the far right. 

“Okay. No fair. You can see in the dark.”

“The Beast won’t play fair either,” Eddie says, “and It can probably see in the dark, too.” His voice flits past Richie’s ears from right to left. It is starting to become disorienting, but Richie quickly shakes it off. Now is not the time to feel jittery. 

“Richie,” Eddie says. He stands behind Richie, close but not close enough that he could turn around and grab him. “Close your eyes. I know it’s pitch black in here and that might be a little redundant, but just do it. And don’t complain.”

Richie purposefully rolls his eyes, hoping Eddie sees, before closing them. 

“I won’t talk anymore.” 

“That’ll be hard. You can’t resist being annoying.” 

“Oh hi, pot, nice to meet you,” Eddie says, sarcastic grip in his tone before another whack on the back of Richie’s knee makes him hiss. Richie lunges out with grabby hands, but Eddie is already back on the other side of the room. The curtains rustle as he bumps into them. 

“You’re by the window.”

“Yes! Good!” More fluttering of movement. “Tell me where I am. I’m not going to talk. Just … feel where I’m standing. Where I’ve moved to.” 

Richie takes three deep breaths, in through the nose and out through the mouth, for a minute. The silence of the house at night is so full in his ears that it is almost impossible to distinguish the thickness of the quiet from any other noise in the room. Eddie is so feather-light on his feet that Richie is convinced he is hovering over the carpet, neither a human nor a bird, but some hybrid supernatural creature that exists only in the ghost stories written in the books that hide on the very top shelf. 

Then, the unimaginable happens; Eddie brushes past him. He does not make a noise, and he does not touch Richie anywhere, but Richie _feels_ him. Feels the warmth of his skin as he walks by, hears the slight inflection of his breath, and the scuff of his bare feet against the carpet. 

“You’re by the fireplace.”

Eddie moves again. 

“You’re … by the couch?” 

“Close,” Eddie says. The smile in his voice sends a tickle of excitement down Richie’s spine. 

“The desk?”

“Okay …”

“You’re back by the window.”

Nothing. Quiet. An owl sings outside, and Richie hears it loud and clear, his ears the most tuned they have been in his life. 

“Eddie?” More silence. “Eddie, where are you?”

“Guess.” 

“Not by the window.”

“Not by the clock, either.”

Richie grins, “The clock struck twelve.”

“The mice ran down.”

“Hickory dickory dock.”

Eddie laughs. “How do you know that song?”

“Desk,” Richie says absently, then, “It comes from my world.”

“Wrong,” Eddie says. “It comes from here.”

Richie groans. “Fine. You’re by the armchair. And I’m sorry, sunshine, but that is some bullshit. How did a nursery rhyme from here make it all the way to my world?” 

Eddie says, “How would it make it all the way from yours to mine?” giving Richie pause. He may have a point there, actually.

“Stop guessing,” Eddie says. He is so close that Richie he feels his breath on his skin, almost tickling. 

“I’m not guessing.” Richie grins. “I’m letting you know where you _will_ be.” 

Richie strikes out towards the direction of the armchair and – yes! Eddie’s wrist is in his grasp. He is shocked, once again, by how startlingly warm Eddie’s skin is, and the darkness of the room eliminating his sight has only heightened it more. 

“Gotcha,” he says, grinning broadly, and Eddie gasps. “I’m already blind as a fuckin’ bat, Eds, you know that right?”

A noise of outrage, and then a flurry of movement followed by a flash of light, and then Eddie is gone again. The flutter of a bird’s wings shoots by his head. Richie groans in frustration. 

“That’s cheating! I won fair and square!” 

A short titter answers him back. 

“Did you just fuckin’ cuss at me in _bird?_ Seriously? _Come oonnnn,_ spaghetti.” He waits. Nothing. “Okay, fine. We’ll do this one more time. You’re sitting up on the curtain rod. No – the top shelf. Do you help Mike get his books down? How much can lift in bird form? Honestly, it’s so sweet how you can just do that. What does it feel like? Umm, you’re sitting on the door frame. Quoth, Lenore, is that you?”

“Do you ever stop talking?” Eddie asks in his very human voice, very, _very_ close. 

Richie’s breath catches in his throat. “It’s a gift, actually. Some people are good at, like, art or math – actually I’m pretty good at math – but me –”

The rest of that sentence cuts off at the root as Eddie’s lips are pressing against his, holding the words hostage. A noise of surprise crawls up Richie’s throat, and his body stiffens until he feels Eddie sigh against his lips, and Richie’s limbs slowly begin to relax. Shoulders drop, and arms come up to encircle Eddie’s waist.

The sigh turns into a grin when Richie leans back just enough to whisper, “Gotcha.”

Eddie says, “Have you?”

“All part of my master plan.”

“Really? Because it seems like I finally got you to shut up.”

“Have you?”

Eddie laughs, and he leans in once again. 

Eyes blinking open to warm sunlight hitting his face through the curtains, Richie sees Eddie, or what is a blur in the shape of Eddie, as he hasn’t yet had the chance to fumble over and retrieve his glasses. Eddie is sitting cross-legged on the foot of the bed, a storybook resting on his knee, and Richie’s shirt tucked carelessly into his pants. The concept is unremarkable in reality, as it is the shirt that he came here in, and has been borrowing for a couple of days now, but in the current setting with the morning sun and the memory of Eddie’s lips still lingering on Richie’s, it is _different_.

Richie hums, rubbing his eyes. “Morning, sunshine.”

Eddie smiles at him quietly, reaching out with his foot to bump against Richie’s thigh in his own morning greeting.

“You’re up early?”

Eddie hums, turning a page. “I couldn’t sleep.”

Richie flops back against the pillows and throws an arm out dramatically. With a sigh, he says, “What ails you, dearest? Is the current phase of the moon not preferable?” 

“You really just wake up like this, don’t you?” Eddie asks, but he is laughing.

“Flawlessly handsome?” Richie hooks his fingers into the corners of his mouth and crosses his eyes. “ _Ah knoeh_.”

The way Eddie looks at him makes Richie stop breathing for a moment.

He clears his throat and leans over to reach for his glasses, skin on fire.

“You look different without them,” Eddie says. “Younger.”

“You look different without them, too,” Richie mumbles while pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Like a pretty blob.”

The words slip out, followed by instant panic. Can he say that? Is he _allowed_ to say that? The kisses they shared the day before seems like an obvious indicator that the answer is _yes_ , but the cold, slippery terror that shoots up Richie’s spine pokes at the back of his skull says otherwise.

Eddie doesn’t look like he minds.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

Eddie shrugs. “It’s nothing.”

“Spaghetti.”

A sigh. “I just keep thinking. When we get the lantern and defeat the Beast, you’ll all finally be able to go home, and I’ll just.” Eddie closes his eyes, thumb gently dog-earring a page of the book. “I’ll miss you, is all.”

Richie’s heart breaks. It hurts a lot more than he ever imagined it could, and the shock of it lifts him from the mattress to clutch at Eddie’s knees. He says, “You don’t have to.”

“What?”

“Come with us.”

Eddie’s mouth falls open. “I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“I …” Eddie flounders, mouth opening and closing for a heartbeat of a moment. Then, “… think it’s time for breakfast.”

Jumping off the bed, Eddie flits out the door in an instant. Richie stares at the empty space he once occupied with bewilderment before falling back against the pillows once more, groaning, “Nice going.” 

-

“What’s wrong?”

“We might die tomorrow.”

“We might die tonight if we d-don’t get the lantern from Eddie’s mom.”

Stanley hums, leaning back into Bill. The kettle still has not begun to shout, and for the longest while, Stan wondered if it was even on.

It is. Mike needs newer appliances. He will remind himself to tell Mike that later.

“That is true,” Stan says.

“Sh-she might also kill us,” Bill mentions.

“That’s …” Stan pauses. From what Eddie has told them about her (see: _warned_ ), this is a very likely possibility. “Also true.”

Stan leans back into Bill’s chest with a sigh. His lips press feather-light to the sensitive spot on the back of Stan’s neck, and it sends shivers along his arms. Bill’s come up to circle his waist, and for a minute, they are content just to stand there, listening to the kettle slowly begin to whistle. Just _being_.

Stan feels a multitude of things he wants to say to Bill build in the forefront of his mind, things like, _I wish we had more time,_ and, _I think our hands fit perfectly together. I_ _’_ _m not sure how but they just do,_ and _, Maybe it_ _’_ _s too soon to say but I think I might just love you a little_ _. Is that silly?_

“Bill?” Stan begins.

Bill hums into the back of his neck, and Stan can picture his eyes closed, mouth curled into a small smile as his nose buries into the short curls there. “Yeah?”

“I’ve been thinking,” he says, “If none of this had happened, if me and Richie hadn’t climbed the Wall when we did, then we wouldn’t have met.”

The very concept, and Stan will keep this a secret forever, twists his stomach into knots.

A small voice in the back of his head whispers, _What have you gone and done to yourself?_ _You know how this will end._

Bill’s arms tighten him, a warm palm pressed firmly to the middle of Stan’s chest. “Well, we might have. You would’ve just been super old.”

A laugh is shocked out of Stan. “Fuck you,” he says, turning in Bill’s arms to find him laughing as well, the quiet one that he does that is all in his eyes, the joy sparkling in his irises and dancing like fireflies.

He breaks, snorting and leaning forward to press his forehead against Stan’s, their noses brushing together once and then once again before Stan cuts the distance and connects their lips. Time turns linear and then non-existent as in the moments they have been standing in the kitchen, Bill crowding him against the counter with hands gripping his hips, Stan’s arms tight around his neck, the kettle has been yelling, and Ben has walked in.

The sound of his gasp and, “ _Oh!_ ” pulls them both back to the surface, and Stan jumps back with a hammering heart, and Bill with a pinched expression.

Ben stands in the doorway with his jaw on the floor. He fumbles there awkwardly, unsure what to say or do, until eventually settling on, “Sorry I was just looking for – it’s not here. I’ll,” he points somewhere, “go.”

After he leaves, Bill cracks. So does Stan, and for a while, the two of them stand in the kitchen and laugh together. Stan’s head falls on to Bill’s shoulder, and Bill hugs his waist again, furtive giggles bubbling through him and into Stan.

It is wonderful.

Eddie house, by all accounts, appears startlingly normal in the nighttime, even just past sunset, which would only mean it’d be uncharismatically boring during the day.

The whole of it is tiny and very compact, skinny and tall. A brown picket fence lines the edge of the garden, parallel to a dirt path that leads further into the woods, and the grass which sways gently in the cool night breeze reaches their knees. A pointy, gabled roof tops it off, and the house might be painted a deep maroon or a rust red, which is the most interesting thing about it.

If, that is, you didn’t know who resided on the inside.

Eddie gave them all a quick run down of his mother and her various oddities – of which there are many – and Mike, who knew Eddie the longest, has even yet to meet the woman.

The list of _What Nots_ is relatively short and straightforward, and Stan counts them on one hand:

 _Don_ _’_ _t look her in the eyes for too long._

 _Smile politely, nod, and try not to say too much. Richie, I_ _’_ _m talking to you._

 _Call her ma_ _’_ _am. Avoid using my last name at all costs._ (“What the fuck is your last name?” Richie asked, to which Eddie responded with a casual, “Kaspbrak.” A weird look formed in Richie’s eye, somewhat like a puppy learning a new trick.)

 _And this one is important,_ he said, _she will offer you food. Probably sit us down at the dinner table. Do not eat any of it._

Now, sitting in the wagon outside the uncomfortably normal Kaspbrak home as they all wait for the nerve to go inside reveals itself to them, Stan feels an apprehension tickling beneath his bones. Apple and Carrot were each given their favourites to keep them happy and quiet while the seven mutely stress in the back. Bill’s thigh is pressed against Stan’s, and his elbow, too, which he occasionally nudge him with, or press his leg harder against his. Stan wants to reach out and take his hand but feels the weight of Ben’s eyes opposite him, and his cheeks burn with the memory of earlier.

“Alright, guys,” Bev says, “What’s the game plan?”

“We do in and get the fuckin’ lantern,” Richie says, “ _That_ _’_ _s_ the game plan.”

“It’s not going to be that easy,” Stan says.

“He’s right. My mother would have hidden it somewhere in the house that won’t be easy to get to. We’ll have to search for it.”

“Okay,” Bill says, “In that case, wuh-one of is will have to distract her.” 

Eddie nods, like he knows this. “I’ll do it.”

“No,” Mike says, leaning forward on his elbows, dark eyes more intense in the night. “You know the inside of that house better than any of us, and you’ll know all the places she could possibly hide it.”

Eddie bites his lip hard enough for it to turn white, and a deep wrinkle cuts between his eyebrows. Richie coughs into his fist and pushes closer to Eddie until their shoulders touch.

“Mike’s right,” Ben says, “We can’t risk any of us getting lost, or not being able to find it. It’ll be – I mean,” he flushes, visible even in the dark, “I don’t want to offend, Eddie, but what you’ve told us about your mom …”

“No, no,” he says, shaking his head, “You’re right. Perfectly fine. I guess – I guess it does have to be me.”

His eyes dart around in thin air as the wheels visible turn behind them, probably pulling up a mental catalogue of all the areas of the house the lantern could be hiding. 

“Okay,” Stan whispers. “That’s settled.”

“Remember, Eddie,” Mike says, “So long as the Beast is alive, the lantern will burn, in which case she’ll have it hidden somewhere bright. Somewhere with a lot of light.”

Eddie nods thoughtfully.

Bev traps her hands between her knees. “Okay. Are we doing this?”

“Yeah,” Bill says, “Sitting out here is giving me the kuh-creeps.”

“You’ll wish you hadn’t said that,” Eddie responds with a sigh and swings himself out from the wagon first, the others following behind him.

They don’t have to wait long on the porch, as the door swings open mere seconds after they’ve knocked, Eddie’s mother standing behind it looking rattled and disheveled, as if she hasn’t slept a wink since her son ran away from home. Eddie did a pretty good job of painting an image of his mother in their minds, but Stan doesn’t think anything could have truly prepared him for seeing the woman in person. She is quite large, both in size and height. She is easily the biggest woman Stan has ever seen, from the way she holds her shoulders in a slight hunch juxtaposing the solemn tilt on her chin and the minute but vivid intensity in her large blue eyes.

Somehow, she manages to tower over the seven of them combined.

Her mouth falls open at the sight of her son, thin lips moving in a tremble when she whispers, “Eddie?”

The sigh is audibly present in Eddie’s voice when he responds, “Hi, momma.” 

“ _Oh_ , Eddie!”

She launches herself at her son like a damn fighter jet, and they all have to step back to make some room, both for the woman herself and the blubbering that comes along with her; “Oh Eddie bear I’ve missed you so much I’ve been ever so worried I’ve been up all night all day worried sick how dare you do that to me are you trying to kill me? Your dear mother? Why you awful boy I oughta lock up and throw away the key! _Ooooh_ , Eddie I’ve missed you so much I’m so happy you’re home you look hungry are you hungry I’ve prepared a meal just in case you came home and here you are who is this?” 

If Eddie hadn’t wrested the woman’s arms from his body and peeled himself out of her embrace, Stan has a feel that Richie may have possibly grabbed the broom sitting by the door and used it as a crowbar to pry her off of him.

“Momma,” Eddie starts, straightening his blue jacket. He made sure to change into his old clothes before they came here.

One last stop at the cottage. Richie spent a length of time in his room, and when he came out, he was teary eyed and held nothing in his hands.

“These are my friends,” Eddie says, “I’ve brought them home to meet you.”

“Friends, huh?” she says, her eyes sweeping over each of them one by one. They linger on Mike the longest, and Stan worries that if, since she has the lantern, she might know who he is, and their plan has crumbled before it could even begin. “I didn’t know you had friends, Eddie.” 

Eddie’s shoulders tighten at her words, and Stan feels a pang in his stomach. Still, his tone never once shifts from perfectly cheerful when he says, “I met them in Rosewood, momma. They’re all thrilled to meet you. May they come in?”

In an off-key orchestra, they each mumble their agreement and greetings. Taking Eddie’s rules into account, Stan averts his gaze.

Slowly, he feels Bill’s hand slip into his, and Stan holds his breath.

She does not answer, eyes burning holes into their foreheads.

Finally, Eddie says, “We’re all terribly hungry. It’s so very late, momma, and I’ve missed your cooking so much,” and, finally, this breaks the spell.

Her eyes turn to Eddie once more and, scariest of all, she smiles. A single tear wells up in her eye before it spills down her cheek in a thin, sharp line. “Well, of course you have, darling,” she says, “Come inside at once.”

The house's interior is more like what Stan had imagined; cluttered but in a way that appears purposeful rather than just hoarding. It reminds him a little of his cottage in the woods. The way Mrs. Kaspbrak has stacked her pots and pans along the kitchen wall is similar to how Stan has laid out his, down to the herb garden on the window ledge.

There are far more animal memorabilia in here, however.

She quickly leads them into the dining room, not giving them the chance to linger anywhere for long. Mike does a scan of the room, gaze flitting from floor to ceiling to wall to window to next room over, as most as he can see. When Sonia sits them down at the table surrounding a feast that looks large enough to feed an army of Vikings, the fog of disillusionment that Stan recognises now as having settled over their eyes in the wagon lifts. Setting out their plan step by step in the wagon and even the mansion before seemed so simple – get in the house, distract momma bear, find the lantern and get the fuck out as fast as they can. Now, sitting at this table with the momma bear herself seated at the foot, the house surrounding them in dark woods and fauna upholstery, he realises how foolish they had been. 

“You all look famished,” Sonia says, carrying a tray of something meaty around to each of them and letting it _splat!_ onto the middle of their plates.

“Starved,” Eddie corrects, his eyes wide and bright, grin large. He drops the façade when she turns away, the glaze he puts over his face sharpening to seriousness at the sight of her back.

Bill cautiously pokes at the ball of something-meat with the end of his fork, but stops when Eddie very slowly shakes his head _no_.

 _You don_ _’_ _t want to know what that is_ , the look says. Bill puts the fork down.

“Now, Eddie,” his mother says, sitting back down, “I do hope you’ve learned your lesson. It was an awful thing you did, leaving like that. I was nearly sick to _death!_ ”

The glassy-eyed, high look is back when Eddie says, “I know, mother. I am so very sorry about that.”

She sniffs. “So, you should be. What example is that setting for your new _friends_.” She says the word like it tastes sour on her tongue. “I do hope none of you treat your mothers that way. Awful.”

Everyone murmurs their agreement.

“My dear boy,” Sonia says, directed at Bill and making his startle, “Don’t just poke at it all night. You want to get some meat on your bones.”

“Bill is a vegetarian, mom,” Eddie says quickly, like he hadn’t much thought about it. Judging from his instant flinch and his mother’s disgusted scowl on her face, as if she’s never heard anything more horrific in her life, it was the wrong thing to say.

Stan squeezes his knee under the table. Richie gives him an anxious stare from across the table, over the pig’s head and stuffed turkey, and Stan thinks that for a woman who loves animal things so much – and is sometimes one herself – she sure does love to eat them.

“That is ridiculous, Eddie,” she says, “You know that word is banned in this house. And your friends are far too skinny. No. I don’t approve.”

“Mother –”

“No. I’ve said my peace.” She crosses her arms. “They can either eat or they can leave. I won’t have you keeping such inappropriate company.”

“Mother, that is not your choice to –”

She slams her hand down on the table so hard Stan feels his teeth rattle, and the pig jumps an inch in the air to land back on its platter with a splash. Bev squeaks and grasps at Ben’s arm. Richie’s ankle knocks into Stan’s, and Bill’s grip on his hand making it to go numb.

 _“_ _No!_ _”_ She shrieks, “How dare you talk back to me! Can’t you see what these people are doing to you? Corruption, Eddie. That is all! Now, you will finish your dinner, take your medicine and go straight up to your room, or I will feed them all to the Beast myself!”

Eddie, head down, shoulders hunched, looks like a small bird attempting to hide amongst his feathers. But at her words, something shifts – they all feel it. It’s like the rush of air they feel right as Eddie changes, how the atoms rearrange themselves around him to make do for the new form. It steals the breath from their lungs, and they can not do anything but sit frozen in their seats.

Slowly, Eddie pulls his head up to look her straight in the eye, and asks, “Where is it?”

Sonia raises an aloof eyebrow. “Where is what?” 

“You know what,” he says, “I know it’s here. I know you have it. Tell me where it is.”

Her eyes narrow. Mike has begun to search the room again for clues. “Edward, you aren’t making any sense. It’s the malnourishment.”

“Eddie …” Richie whispers, grasping his sleeve.

He says, “We want the lantern,” and the penny drops in Sonia’s eyes. Where was once a semblance of motherly warmth has now fizzled into pure and frozen nothingness. 

“ _Eds_ ,” Richie whispers again.

Eddie turns to him and says, “It’s okay,” and then to his mother: “Your medicine? I know what it really does. All my life you’ve told me it will keep me safe, that I’m sick and your medicine is the only thing that will help me. But I learned a new word out in the woods, mom, and that’s _bullshit_.”

Her large, meaty hand slams back down on the table but so does Eddie’s, except there is a knife in it, and the knife stabs right through her flesh and bones like butter.

Food tips and spills of the floor and so do the chairs that fall backwards when they all jump from their seats in fright as the woman screams. Her scream starts off ordinary and expected, when you have a knife in your hand, but morphs into something larger, deeper, and animalistic. A bear’s roar.

Ben pulls Beverly towards him by her waist in a tight embrace, cringing away from the blood with a small, “Oh my god.”

Bill hisses, “Shit,” and tugs Stan closer to him, and opposite them Mike is attempting to keep Richie back from the table, but he doesn’t seem to want to budge.

Eddie stands bent over the table, white-knuckled fist trembling around the knife, and eyes burning into his mother’s. He matches her cry with his own high, bird-like screech so loud they have to cover their ears. Mother and son stare each other down, teeth bared, and backs hunched over like animals ready to pounce. 

Stan’s ears ring when they grow silent.

Voice soft and cautionary, Mike says, “Eddie. Eddie the fireplace.”

“Go,” Eddie says, never once letting his eyes stray from his mother’s. He appears caught in a half state between shifting – the blue of his clothes hangs off him like a new skin, and his eyes have morphed from the usual brown to a honey yellow. 

“Eddie,” Richie tries again as Mike runs for the living room.

“Get the lantern and get out of the house.”

Richie gapes. “I’m not leaving you.”

“He’s right,” Stan says, “fuck that.”

“I’ll be right behind you,” Eddie says, talking over his mother who is curled over in pain, groaning into the table. “I promise. Go.”

Bill shouts, “Look out!” just as a dinner fork comes flying through the air, narrowly missing Richie’s face and landing square on the floor. Its teeth bite into the wood, tail wagging in the air. He ducked just in time, but it had been a close call enough that Stan felt his heart lurch in his throat.

They cry out and run towards Richie while Sonia laughs, her face still in the table.

Eddie’s panicked shout only makes her laugh harder.

“I’m okay,” Richie says, Bill patting his shoulders down while Stan pushes himself between him and the woman.

Eddie growls and grabs another knife to point at his mother’s chin. “Do not _fucking_ –”

“Or what?” She says, “Hm, Eddie bear?”

“Mike!” Stan shouts in the direction of the living room.

“It’s up the chimney!” Mike calls back, Ben and Bev grunting and shouting in the background, “We can see it, just gotta reach it!”

“Just leave her,” Richie pleads, “Just leave her like that, come on. She can’t shift if she’s hurt.”

The betrayal in the woman’s eyes is so palpable nearly has to look away.

“You told them about us?” She asks, eyes wide and glistening, “A horrid, dirty boy like that? Eddie … What’s happened to my little boy? He’s corrupted you, Eddie. He’s made you _sick_.”

“Shut up!” Eddie cries, “Shut your mouth, don’t you dare talk about Richie like that! Mike is going to find that lantern, and then we are getting out of here. All of us.”

And then she truly begins to cry.

The raking sobs take up all the space in the room for anything else; the sad, horrible noise drowns out the victory cry of Mike, Bev, and Ben finally getting hold of the lantern and running with it into the dining room. Eddie’s stance changes, whether it is the line of his shoulders softening of the grip on the night easing up, but something has changed when he tells them, “Go on. I’ll be right out.”

Doing as they’re told, albeit reluctantly, they all leave. Bill and Stan have hold each of Richie’s arms, pulling him from the house all the while he fights them, kicking and yelling, “We can’t just leave him in there with her! _Guys!_ ”

He continues to struggle against their hold until they reach the edge of the fence, and several things happen in a succession that isn’t clear; a crash, a scream, Eddie’s voice, a strained terror that turns Stan’s blood ice cold, and then silence.

There is nothing for a while.

“No,” Richie whispers, “No no no no. Eddie! _Eddie!_ ”

“Oh my god,” Bev gasps, cupping her hand over her mouth. Mike loses his balance, swaying into the fence. The lantern in his hand swings along with him, the light casting a quick, eerie ray across the yard.

Richie is still shouting at Bill and Stan to let him go when the shadow of a figure appears in the doorway, marching slowly towards them. Stan wishes he kept a knife from the table, or even had that broom that sits by the door – _anything_ – when the inevitable starts towards them, and they meet their fate –

Eddie walks out of the house. He is holding his arm, the appendage hanging limp, but he walks all the same. Richie collapses against Stan with a sound like all the air has just left and returned into his body in one go, finally breaking their hold to hurry towards Eddie. They let him.

It is only when he moves into the light cast by the lantern that they notice he is still holding the knife that was buried in his mother’s hand, the one that is covered in blood, just as he is.

Richie stops in his tracks five feet away.

Eddie’s voice is small and trembling when he explains, “She wouldn’t have let me go. She wouldn’t have let us leave. I … I had to.”

The knife drops to the ground. So does Eddie. 

-

There are many reasons why they shouldn’t linger in the yard, but they do anyway.

Mike studies the lantern by the wagon, having to push away the horses’ noses when they become too curious. Ben and Bev lean on the other side of it, perfectly silent. Stan and Bill sit near them with their backs against the picket fence, whispering quietly to themselves with their heads close. Bill’s cheek rests against Stan’s temple, curls kissing his lips.

Richie turns his attention away and back to Eddie, where it can’t stray from for long. He is trembling less now, but the eyes remain glassy. The knife has been thrown somewhere so he can’t see it (then Mike picked it back up and slipped it in his pocket, making sure the clean all the blood off first).

They’ll need it very soon. He gets that.

Eddie doesn’t need to see it. 

Eventually, Mike comes up behind them, and with a weary expression, says, “We shouldn’t stay here. The Beast would know we have the lantern by now, and It’ll be trying to find us.”

“Eddie,” Richie tries, taking Eddie’s hand. “Hey, spaghetti?”

Eddie blinks, and looks up.

Richie breathes a sigh of relief. “There you are, sunshine,” he says, “We – we gotta go now.”

Still nothing.

“Eds …”

“Do you really think,” Eddie begins, softly, “there’s room for me in your world?”

A tiny smile finds its way onto Richie’s face. He says, “Absolutely.”

They decide they will draw straws.

“If we’re doing this,” Mike says, plucking bits of tall grass from the yard, “it has to be tonight. The Beast will be angry and looking for us. We can’t give It the opportunity to attack first.”

“Okay, so,” Ben asks, “How are we going to find It before It finds us?”

“We’ll have to lure it in.” Mike says, “I’ll do it.”

“No, you won’t,” Eddie says.

“Who else –?”

Richie says, “We’ll draw straws,” and Mike looks down into his hand with a sigh. Once the grass has been sized up and organised, they sit in a circle and take turns plucking a piece from Mike’s hand. Richie draws a long one, so does Eddie, a cool wash of relief trickles down from Richie’s head at the sight of it, and so does Bill, and Bev, and Ben.

Stan plucks the short straw, the length of it the size of his pinky finger.

“Wait,” Bill starts, leaning forward like he is about to take flight, “huh-hang on. Go again.”

Stan shuts his eyes. “It’s okay.”

Richie is shaking his head, heart plummeting to his stomach. “No, it’s not. I’ll do it.”

“Guys, really. It’s alright.”

“It is _not_ alright.”

“This is so stupid,” Bev says in a low whisper, shaking her head. “We’ll all do it. Together.”

“If we all lure It, we won’t be able to get the jump on It. We’ll be dead,” Stan says. “We do this now. We bandage Eddie’s arm up, and we do it.”

Eddie starts, looking down at his arm as if he’d forgotten he was hurt. “Shit,” he whispers. “I think it’s broken. I won’t be able to shift.”

“Don’t worry,” Ben says, to both Eddie and Stan, “We’ve got your back.”

They prepare for whatever it is they’re marching into like a medieval angry mob preparing to march to Dracula’s castle, flaming torches and all.

Richie bandages Eddie’s arm as best as he can, Eddie telling him how to do it. He flinches away every time Eddie breathes a little too hard, which ends up annoying him until the arm is completely wrapped up. Afterward they lean into one another, too exhausted to be really angry, foreheads pressed.

“I’m so sorry,” Richie tells him, not sure what he is apologising for, but knows it is a few things. _I_ _’_ _m sorry we_ _’_ _re here right now. I_ _’_ _m sorry you_ _’_ _re hurt. I_ _’_ _m sorry you had to deal with your mother your whole life and I_ _’_ _m sorry she_ _’_ _s dead now. I_ _’_ _m sorry you had to do it. I_ _’_ _m sorry it had to be to save us._

Softly, Richie leans forward to press his mouth to Eddie’s. With a sigh that Richie feels reflected in his bones, Eddie kisses him back.

“I am, too,” Eddie says, then looks over to where Bill and Stan are standing by the fence. Bill has been trying to convince Stan to let him take his place for the last ten minutes or so. So far, he hasn’t budged, and Richie doubts that he will.

In third grade, Stan had such an allergy toward sports that, during PE, he would stand at the back of the gym and look as sickly as possible. Everyone has their own classroom related kryptonite at that age, and reluctant participation was Stan’s. He would throw out every excuse in the book, because even at eight-years-old, no one could make Stan do something he didn’t want to. At least not without having to hear about it for a very long time.

Now, Richie watches as he crosses his arms, shoulders pushed, listening to Bill bargain within an inch of his life. Chin held high with the usual posture that older people back home would coo and congratulate his parents about; it reminds Richie of those days again. In the back of the school gym, calmly explaining to a teacher twice his height why he couldn’t participate in dodgeball that day.

 _He is going to be fine_ , Richie thinks.

Bill evidently loses the argument. Of course.

When Eddie calls Stan over and orders him to sit with them, it is so he can dip his fingers into a small pot of mulch he dug out of his bag and begin drawing a sigil on his forehead. Bill follows, and the two sit very close on the grass, opposite Eddie and Richie.

“What’s this?” Stan asks, blinking when a small drop lands on the tip of his nose.

“For protection,” Eddie answers. He shrugs. “But you won’t need it. We’ll be right behind you.”

Richie asks, “Any idea of how you’re going to distract It?”

Stan says, “One.”

-

The old Derry church house, which sat on Neibolt street and terrified a younger Stan for years, has been replaced by the second thing on Neibolt street that haunted his nightmares; the old Well House. However, the well itself remained, but the house around it is mostly gone save for a cut out of the floorboards like a giant walked over and plucked it from their world to deposit it into this one.

When they first arrived in this world, Richie refused to sleep. Significantly more than he does now. Back then, it was a terror that kept him awake. Not a nightmare but a daydream, a hallucination and a paranoia that if he were to close his eyes, the Something that had spared them up until this point would surely come and claim him. Stan wondered how he coped so well when Richie was suffering so profusely.

He wondered if the Beast was terrorising him back then.

It really has been watching.

It must have been watching the first time Stan, barely just sixteen years old, pulled his best friend into his arms and began to sing. He wasn’t extremely good in any way, but the lullabies he sang, some of them made up on the spot, still managed to lull Richie to sleep. For a while, it was the only thing that could.

 _S_ _ing a song for me, Stanley. Just like you sing to Richie._

Stan opens his mouth and begins to sing, on his knees with the lantern at his side, the cold glow of it casting a ghostly light over his face.

Again, it is not overly good. It just needs to serve its purpose.

He sings in the darkness and imagines the eyes of his friends who kneel in the woods somewhere at his back, watching over him. He imagines a light casting over them like the light that expelled from Eddie’s sun root. It finds Richie and settles on his shoulders like a warm cloak, and it finds Bill and twines around his wrists and his arms, and curls around his lovely neck, resting there.

Soon the frogs catch ear of his tune and join in, and the fireflies dance in circles above his head.

Soon a figure looms just beyond the well. The sticks break beneath their shoes, larger than an average man’s, as he slowly approaches Stan. A man appears out of the darkness. He is taller than average, or maybe taller than above average, but could pass for ordinary if it weren’t for the unconventional angle that his shoulders tilt, or the abnormally large size of his forehead. Red hair curls at his ears, visible from the glow of the lantern, and the stark orange of his eyes.

He is clapping. White paint clings to his knuckles.

“Beautiful, Stanley,” The Beast says – Pennywise, although he does not look like it now, “Just wonderful. Did you rehearse that just for me?” 

“Well, of course,” Stan says, as flat as humanly possible, “Dinner and a show, and all that.”

Pennywise smiles. Even looking like a man, Its smile still stretches the corners of his mouth into an abnormal curve.

“I have to thank you, Stanley, for bringing that back to me,” It says, pointing at the lantern. Stan slides it closer to himself, grip tight on the handle. “It is awfully dreadful when your favourite things go missing.”

“What, this?” Stan lifts the lantern and points it in the Beast’s face. It hisses and takes a step back like a threatened animal. “This is what you want?”

Pennywise continues to creep forward, Its shoulders hunched, and mouth curled into that awful smile. The light catches on a line of drool down Its chin. “That doesn’t belong to you, Stanley. Be a good boy now and give it back to me.”

A shift in the woods behind him.

“You know,” Stan says, his bones tensing the closer Pennywise gets but refusing to break even though every part of him is screaming at him to run. “I don’t think it belongs to you, either. I think _you_ belong to _it_. And I also like you better as a clown.”

It pounces. Stan is knocked backward as claws dig into his shoulders and break flesh, and for a second all he sees it _teeth teeth teeth everywhere_ and then something is flying through the air and piercing square through Pennywise’s skull. The force of it knocks It off Stan, who gasps for breath, tears stinging the corners of his eyes, his shoulders and cheeks burning.

 _It bit me,_ he thinks, _it bit me it bit m_ _e it bit me._

A chorus of _Holy shit!_ and _Stan!_ surrounds him as the faces of his friends appear in view one at a time. Words echo in the caverns of his mind, like calling out in an empty tunnel, and he is only half able to make out a lot of it until hands grip the side of his face.

 _“_ _Stan!_ _”_ Bill is on his knees at his side while the others rush forward with their torches, yelling and forcing the Beast away with the light. They’re like a children’s crusade of angry soldiers, but except for toy guns and plastic swords they weird fire and steal.

“Stan,” Bill says, “Look at me. Hey!”

“I’m okay,” Stan gasps. His skin burns. He is not okay.

“ _Shhhit_.” Bill pulls a cloth from his pocket and presses it to Stan’s cheek. Stan blinks several times to still his vision until the green of Bill’s irises comes into focus, and he feels like he can breathe again. His hair falls over his forehead, covering one of Bill’s eyes, just as he looked the day they met when he put himself between Bill and a group of angry dinner forks. Stan thinks he would do it again, a thousand times over given the chance, and maybe some more. He thinks Bill is the most beautiful boy he has ever seen.

He also thinks this is not a very good time to be thinking all of this.

“I’ve got you,” Bill says, lifting Stan off the floor to his feet, keeping one arm securely around him.

The Beast is laughing maniacally while the others wave their torches at It, and soon it disappears into the shadows once again. The seven huddle together, back to back and breathing hard with their flaming torches, and Stan with the lantern.

“Where is It?”

“I don’t see It?”

“Where did It go?”

“Hey, ugly! You runnin’ away now?”

“Richie – what the _fuck?_ ”

“What? We need to come back.”

“Are you fucking serious, you’re going to get us all killed!”

“If we don’t get It in the lantern, we’re all dead anyway.”

Eddie snaps, “Guys can you all please shut the fuck up!”

Everyone shuts up. The woods are quiet. Not even the frogs are singing, and the fireflies have fled. It is true what Mike said: The Beast will do everything in Its power to snuff out the light around them.

One by one, the torches begin to go out.

Ben’s first, and then Bev’s. The two rush to relight them using help from the others in a panicked frenzy, and Stan feels that they are properly cornered this time. Forget the church, forget the four walls and locked doors that kept them in – _here_ there is nowhere to hide.

Stan lifts the lantern higher, his skin burning with the effort. Bill’s hand finds his, and in the space between now and when the world turns a little more sideways, he feels calm.

Then Richie shouts, “Look out!” and the Beast comes charging towards them on all fours like an animal, and snatches Beverly up by her throat.

Everyone shouts in unison as Beverly is lifted in the air, some scatter, and some attempt to run towards her – Ben and Mike – but are knocked backward by a long, octopus-like arm that shoots out of the nothing.

It’s so dark, too dark, and Stan’s eyes aren’t adjusting.

“We need more light,” Stan says.

“No shit, Stanford, how the hell are we going to do that?” Richie asks.

Bev’s legs are kicking in the air. They kick so hard she loses one of her shoes, and every time Ben and Mike attempt to get back up they are knocked down again. Bill and Eddie throw their torches wildly around in the air whenever one of the tentacles comes near enough, but never manage to land a hit.

“Shit!”

Richie is on the ground, searching for something.

Eddie has jumped on one of the tentacles and is attempting to burn it off at close contact, being wildly tossed around in the air while Bill hangs on to one of his legs, occasionally lifting off the ground. Mike and Ben thrash around wildly, pinned to the ground by the other.

“Richie, what –?”

The steel rod that had pierced Pennywise’s skull is now clenched tight in Richie’s fist. The middle is covered in some horrific combination of meat, flesh, and some strange white chippings that resemble ash. It must have flown straight through Its head.

Richie shouts, “Everyone get ready!”

“The fuck are you doing?” Stan gasps.

“Richie!” Ben yells, “Don’t! You could hit Bev!”

“I won’t,” Richie says, then Stan watches in horror as he closes his eyes, whispering to himself, “Use your instincts and feel around in the dark.”

Then Richie opens his eyes, and before Stan could do anything to stop him, the rod is flying like a javelin.

It lands with a sickening crunch, and Bev gasps right as she is dropped, and so does the Beast. The tentacles retreat, and Bill and Eddie fall to the floor while Ben and Mike scramble to their feet, rushing over to Bev, who gasps for breath, clutching at her throat.

Laughter.

All around them, all at once – a low, lunatic laugh. “That hurt, Richie, I must admit,” It says. “But you weren’t trying to k-k-k-kill me, were you? _Me?_ _”_

Its voice shifts back to the echo in the drainpipe, steel against steel they heard in the church house that curdles Stan’s blood. It laughs again, and the laughter sounds the same.

“ _Oooh_ , but some of you would know about that, wouldn’t you? Isn’t that right, Eddie bear?”

“Don’t listen to It!” Mike shouts.

“No,” Eddie whispers, walking into backward Richie who instantly winds an arm around his middle, pulling him against his chest.

“Or Buh-Buh-Buh-Billy?”

Bill grows still at Stan’s side, mouth falling open.

“Do you want you know how he called out for you, Billy? How _pooooor_ little Georgie screamed your –”

Stan shouts, “No!” and launches himself at Bill, covering his ears. “No, stop listening,” he whispers, pressing his forehead to Bill’s, “Stop, It wants to get inside your mind. It wants to screw with you. It doesn’t really know, Bill, It doesn’t know shit about anything.” 

Bill’s eyes are glistening, fresh tears running down his cheeks. Stan wipes them away and presses his mouth to Bill’s, just for a moment, just enough to get him to stand still, to stop listening, to reach up and grasp Stan’s hair. Until neither of them can hear It anymore.

Still looking at Bill, the tips of their noses touching, he says to Richie, “Distract It. We need to set something on fire.”

“The fuck –” Richie squabbles, “How?”

“Just! I don’t know, start talking!”

“No, I mean what the fuck are you going to set on fire?”

“There’s nothing here but trees,” Bill adds, helpfully.

Stan supposes he hadn’t thought about that.

The lantern shines at his feet. The Beast is still being sinister in the shadows and taunting them as the others do everything they can to ensure the torches stay lit, and Stan at once decides he is so very sick of all of this.

He picks the lantern up, takes Bill’s hand, and makes a run for the well.

Richie is swearing, “Shit, fuck, _sonova_ – Hey! Over here, you ugly motherfucker! Squid ass bitch! What’s with the clown getup, you lose a bet?”

Stan and Bill run to the well as the others join in with Richie’s taunting. The well looks very similar to how it does in Derry, as did the church, but with one minor drawback – it is empty. Blocked up.

“Not real,” Bill whispers.

“No,” Stan says, “Not real. Now help me get something flammable in it.”

They collect as many branches, leaves, and dried grass as they can while racing against the clock until they are satisfied with the haul. Then, Stan rests the lantern at the lip of the well and reaches for the clasp.

Bill’s hand grips his wrist. “Are you shh-sure about this?”

“No.” Stan laughs. “Not at all.”

Bill lets his grip fall until their fingers lace together. “On three,” he says.

They count to three and open the lantern just a crack before a bullet of flame shoots out of it and lands straight in the centre of the well. They rush to shut it again as the whole thing goes up in flames instantly, the heat so strong Stan feels it singe his eyebrows.

“Okay,” Bill gasps, “That was kuh-cool. Let’s n-never do that again.” 

“Agreed.”

The Beast stands in the middle of the field, painted orange by the light of the flames, and this makes It angrier than ever.

Arms and legs of every kind shoot out from Its body – octopus, crab, spiders and snakes, and others that move too fast for Stan to catch, swiping for the lantern. Bill snatches it from his hand when they are knocked to the ground, tossing it to Ben who catches it expertly. The lantern goes on a journey around the group, when Ben passes it to Eddie, who throws it to Bev when the Beast takes another swipe, screeching in ear-splitting rage, who then throws it to Richie.

Who misses and drops it.

Panic surges through Stan, who feels as if all he can do at that moment when time slows down before his eyes is watch the lantern, the oldest most powerful artifact in the Unknown, roll to an agonizing stop in the centre of the field.

“Oh fuck,” someone says. Possibly all of them.

The Beast lunges, and so does Mike, who has picked up the spear Richie threw at It. So does everyone else, running towards it now with nothing to lose; pure adrenalin and animalistic intentions with their torches and arms waving in the air, screaming at the top of their lungs.

Stan plunges the torch into the Beast’s chest with all the strength in his body, feeling the ten marks on his shoulders scream with him, as Richie shouts, _“_ _Asshole!_ _”_ and swings a torch into Its face so hard the It does a full turn, and then –

Mike has the lantern.

He holds it up to the Beast’s face, and it is like the world has stopped turning. The Beast grows still, mesmerised by the ethereal glow of the light emitting from the centre of the lantern. Stan pants into the dirt, battered and bruised and in so much pain, struggling to stay awake. As he does, he wonders what it is the Beast sees in the light; if it is something, or nothing at all. Through blurry vision, he sees Mike’s mouth moving fast, chanting words he cannot hear. He sees Richie on his side, Eddie leaning over him and shielding his body protectively. He sees Ben and Bev huddled similarly, and to his right is Bill, leaning up on his elbows, yelling.

Stan reaches out and takes his hand in his once again.

Then the light stops.

Darkness falls again.

Nothing. 

-

When Stanley Uris was six years old, his school put on a summer production of _Wind in the Willows,_ and he had the good fortune of playing the rat. It wasn’t amazing, probably not even good, but in his memory it may as well have been Broadway. The lights shone like a hundred fireflies, compared to by Richie, playing the toad – this was before his parents realised he needed glasses – and the cellophane river the design team taped to the stage crunched beneath his feet when he pretended to wade through it.

Stan was small at the time, but even at six-years-old held a much higher standard of reading and comprehension than most of the other kids in his class. However, there was always one line that stuck out to him. He didn’t understand it. He felt like his classmate who recited the line, over-dramatically with a fake rabbit nose, ears, and a sword clutched in his hand, didn’t really get it either.

Most of all, he didn’t understand the feeling it gave him of deep discontent, and longing.

It went: _There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worse of all, no way out._

Now, when Stan thinks back on it, and he has done so many times over the last three years, there might have been some foreshadowing.

Also, because it was just fun: _There_ _’_ _s nothing_ _–_ _absolutely nothing_ _–_ _half so much worth doing as messing about in boats._

And for a moment Stan thinks, _Oh, I must be dead_ , if he is thinking about boats and rats.

He becomes aware of the breeze first, and a faint itch on his nose where something tickles it next, and how his foot has fallen asleep. Then there is the sound of a river somewhere to his left, and it grows and grows until Stan is forcing his eyes open, because _Oh, I_ _’_ _m not dead, I_ _’_ _m not dead._

“No,” a voice answers above him, very close, “That not allowed.”

Stan opens his eyes. He is lying with his head pillowed in Bill’s lap, and Bill’s hands are in his hair, fingers gently combing through the thick curls, his green eyes crinkled in the corners. He is also alive.

“Where is everyone?”

“Right here,” he says. “Everyone’s fuh-fine. We’re good. Stan,” Bill says, “we got It.” 

Everyone is fine, just as Bill said.

Only arguing with him for a second or two when Stan insists on getting up (this is when he find out his face is bandaged, and so are his shoulders), Bill doesn’t stray far from arms reach so Stan can stumble around the clearing on wobbly legs. Richie, Mike and Eddie sit by the river, one that Stan had no idea existed, Bev and Ben against a tree not far.

They’re the first to notice Stan has woken up. Bev instantly reaches out and takes his hand, blinking up at him with pink tinting her hazel irises. “Hey,” she says, sniffing. “Look who’s up!”

“We’re glad you’re okay,” Ben says, offering a warm smile, and Stan notices his eyelashes are wet.

Their words alert the others by the riverbank. Richie is the first to gallop over, followed by Eddie and Mike, and wastes no time enveloping Stan in a tight hug. When Stan hugs back just as tight, he realises Richie’s shoulders are shaking, and when he leans back, he is surprised to find his glasses fogged with tears.

Richie says, “We actually did it.”

“What?” Stan asks stupidly.

“Man,” Richie laughs. “How hard did you hit your head?”

Eddie takes his shoulders and lightly steers him in the right direction, back into the forest, except now there is a break in the trees that definitely was not there before, and beyond it a wall.

The Wall.

“The gate,” Mike says. “No more Beast to keep it hidden.”

Stan laughs, even though doing so hurts his face. The rest join in, and soon enough Richie is hugging him again, and Bill from the back, and then Eddie, and Ben and Bev, and finally Mike. They stand there for seconds, minutes, hours, or days hugging and laughing, and also crying a little.

The begins, “The lantern –?”

“Hidden,” Mike says, “I’ve put it somewhere safe, where no one will ever find it.”

Eddie presses his forehead to Mike’s shoulder. There is a melancholy curve to his smile.

“We can go home now,” Bev whispers.

“Mike,” Ben starts, “Come with us. Derry’s your home, too, you can still …”

The look on Mike’s face causes the rest of Ben’s sentence to fade out. “I can’t do that. It’s my job to look after the lantern now. If I leave …” he sighs, and draws back, “Well, I’m afraid to find out what would happen. And I’ve – I’ve been here for so long that the world out there isn’t one that I’d recognise anymore. It never was mine in the first place.”

“You’re staying?” Stan asks, the words leaving his mouth funny. Out of the corner of his eye he feels Richie’s gaze on him.

Mike nods. “The world out there is your home. This is mine.”

In a flurry of movement, Eddie is on him, arms wrapped around Mike’s neck, pulling him the short distance down to his level in a strong embrace. He is mutely sobbing as Mike returns the hug. He whispers something in Eddie’s ear too low for the rest of them to hear.

After Mike leaves, Stan feels the skin on his arms begin to tingle with anxiety, like something is crawling between his bones again. They’re going to leave. They’re all going to leave soon, but Stan will remain.

Even after everything that has happened he wants to stay. The revelation nearly knocks him off his feet, as even Stan himself thought he might have changed his mind by now. Maybe a part of him wanted to, but that fragment of himself is too small, and smothered by all the beauty he sees when he looks out over the horizon. Even now, the river shines like a thousand sunrises are happening all at once. It takes his breath away, as always.

The words rush out of him quickly, a small wave crashing against a shore; “I'm not going.” 

They leave him breathless and gasping, heart hammering in his chest. Richie is the first to stop but the last to turn around, yet, somehow, out of the five, Eddie is the only one who looks surprised. 

Up ahead and nestled against the wagon is Apple and Carrot, who whinny over the words. Like they understand. 

Stan continues, “I want to stay. I’m sorry, Richie, I -” 

“I know,” Richie says.

And he has, Stan realises at once, possibly for a very long time.

Richie continues, “I guess maybe I hoped you'd change your mind.” 

Stan whispers, “I'm sorry,” again, this time into Richie's shoulder, and Richie responds with, “Don't be,” over and over, but Stan knows a part of him will always be sorry. A part of him will feel like he has let Richie down, and it will linger for a long time, but another part, a larger part of him, the one that has known Richie for years and centuries, knows he understands. 

Bill lingers in the corners of his vision, a flash of auburn hair in the sunrise. Stan parts from Richie for a moment, and says, “Give me one second?” and doesn't think about the knowing glint that twinkles in Richie’s eye.

Stan takes Bill’s hand and leads him over to the lake.

Bill asks, “How do you feel?” once they’re by the water, shoes sinking into the sand.

“A lot of things,” Stan answers, pads of his fingers tracing down the length of Bill’s shirt. There is a tear at the left pocket, right over his heart, exposing pale skin underneath. It was one of Stan’s, this shirt, thee collar threaded together with black stitch, where he had to sew it back on a couple years ago after it caught on a branch and tore. He feels his heart ache ten times over. 

“Ask me to come with you,” he whispers.

Bill breathes deeply through his nose and leans forward until their foreheads press together. He says, “’m not gonna do that. I couldn’t ask you to leave. Mostly because I'm also not going anywhere.” 

Stan’s heart skips a beat, nearly stopping altogether. The others linger just out of hearing distance, casting quick glances toward their direction every so often.

“What do you mean?” Stan asks, feeling lightheaded and like he can’t trust his ears. For a moment, he is almost sure this is a trick, that the Beast isn’t really gone, and this is just another one of Its illusions.

But then Bill cups his face and stares right into his eyes as he repeats, no stutter, “I'm staying here, too.” 

Stan says, “No you're not.”

And Bill says, “Yes I am.”

“No you're _not_ , Bill,” Stan says, pushing back.

Bill meets him halfway.

“Stan,” He says, “I've already decided.” 

“You can't do that. You – you have a life out there; you can still go. It's not too late and no time will have passed.”

“Stan.” 

“Don't give up your life just for –”

“I’m not giving up on anything,” Bill insists, cutting him off. His eyes are wide and electric, cheeks flushed a rosy pink. “That feeling you talked about before, the – t-the longing for this world, and the feel-feeling of dread when you think of Derry. The feeling like you’re suffocating over the thought of going back.” Bill looks over the river. An albatross glides on the far side over the glistening water, like a surrealist painting. “But here you can breathe. I feel it, too, Stan. Every day.”

Someone calls his name while his mind is busy spiralling, and Stan turns to see Beverly standing close by. She looks like she might cry. Ben, beside her, looks much the same. “He's already made up his mind.” 

“And there's no changing it,” Ben says, “Right, you stubborn bastard?”

Bill laughs. “Always.” 

“Bill,” Stan whispers, hands cupped gently at Bill’s elbows, their faces close together, “Billy.”

“Looks like you-you’re stuck with me for a while longer, Uris.”

Stan laughs, and then he kisses him.

Richie is saying goodbye to the horses when they eventually meet back up at the foot of the woods. He is holding Carrot’s nose with his face pressed against Apple’s.

“Look after them for me. Especially the goofy lookin’ one. And Bill,” he says, voice thick. “I’m gonna miss you idiots.”

“Apple,” says Apple.

“Carrot,” says Carrot.

And together they say, “Richie.”

Well. How about that.

Richie whispers, “What the fuck?” at Stan, at beginning and end of the Unknown, when he is hugging him one last time.

Stan shrugs. “Who knew?”

“The gate is open now,” Richie says, “So that means you fuckers can write letters or some shit. No excuses.”

“We’ll send you a postcard from Derry,” Eddie says, saddling up beside Richie, but not being able to for long before he is drawn into another hug by Bill.

Stan and Bill, accompanied by the horses, watch their friends give one final wave from the top of the Wall, backlit by sunlight too bright to look at directly, and then they are gone. Stan, admittedly, expected some big flash of light, or a change of the wind, or a bird song to send them on their way, but instead, it is none of that.

 _The gate is open,_ he thinks to himself. _This isn’t goodbye._

They have just simply gone home.

They are home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotes from the book Stan reads to Bill are from Tuck Everlasting. 
> 
> Come say hi to me on [tumblr here.](https://moonlightstanata.tumblr.com/)


End file.
